The Genius Maker #51

1st Place! OK, it is a tie, but at least we are 4 games ahead of the nearest wild card team. The 3 best records in the AL are in our division and the top 3 in wins in baseball are in our division.

Hip Hip Jorge! Two Grand Slams in a row! I found it funny that right before the one today O'Neill made a comment stating on a 2-0 count you have to decide whether you will take a pitch or let loose. I turned to my son who was watching, I mean in the same room as I was and I am sure not paying any attention to what I was saying, and said, of course you let him loose...and the BOOM!

The Slam was very important, as is having Posada catching, when you are starting Pena at 3rd base a rookie in RF and Tex who is still struggling-even if he has been better. Huffman (not the Hoffman guy we got for Bruney and had to give back), reminds me of Hoffman. He looks like a guy who can field his position, run reasonably well, but his bat didn't look very impressive to me (in the 5 AB's). It looked like his swing is a little long. Either way, hopefully he can give us some help and maybe we get lucky.

I was very happy to see Gardner continue to gut it out and help us with a heavily taped thumb and today contributed a lot getting on base 4 out of 5 times and making an excellent catch. I still think he should be our every day CF'r and Granderson should be in LF because I think Gardner can cover a little more ground and isn't as much of a liability against lefties as Granderson. Gardner has an OPS of .762 against lefties which is respectable; Granderson is doing what I expected against lefties (an OPS around the same .570 as the last 3 years), however, while he has been good against righties at about an .850 OPS, he usually is over .900; he can get better.

Jeter has looked a step slower of late. He has not been able to beat out a few plays I thought he could make and he also got thrown out on a play he had a great jump on. Today he tried to steal on a 2-2 pitch that was in the dirt and still got thrown out. First, I would have liked to see him beat out a breaking ball in the dirt and second, what was he doing doing going on a 2-2 pitch? That is usually not the place to steal unless you are a big stolen base threat as the next pitch could be an automatic 3-2, which it would have been.

Tex got way out of sorts in this game after he was barely hit on the toe and the ump ruled he did not get hit (I was surprised the Yanks didn't ask for help from other umps?). He then swung at ball 4, made an error in the field and popped up weakly on 2 very inside cutters he should not have been swinging at. He finally did reach base when he was hit again.

No complaints about the ump (even though the strike zone for the ump behind home plate was not good) because Jeter failed to charge a ground ball and threw to 2nd late on a force, but the ump ruled in our favor for the out.

We finished the easy stretch 12-4 so that was good. Now we need to keep it rolling. We have a tough trip in that after we play 6 home games against Philly and the Mets, we go to west coast playing Arizona and the Dodgers. We then come back for 6 games against Seattle and Toronto and then fly right back to the west coast and play Oakland and Seattle to finish up the before the break. I guess we need at least 15 of those 25 games and can hope for more.

ARod has hip stiffness as well as his tight groin; he is questionable for Tuesday. Thames should be back from his hammy after 2 weeks.