Friday, July 2, 2010

The Genius Maker #66

Burnett pitched pretty well; thank you Eiland. He was helped by Toronto struggling (Wells swinging at ball 4 was a big help early in the game) and a fairly wide strike zone, but he nailed some corners. He also worked in about 3-4 changeups.

However, this game was lost in 2 main spots.

1) Bottom of the 3rd inning and the Yanks are up 1-0. They have bases loaded and nobody out with ARod up. The pitcher is really struggling and falls behind ARod 2-0. With Cano and Posada on deck, this has the making of at least 2 runs and could be a lot more. 6 pitches later, both ARod and Cano have struck out and the entire game changed. Posada hit a hard grounder the 2nd baseman made a nice play on and we didn't score a run! Almost inexplicable. ARod deserves a lot of blame, but Cano didn't do well either.

2) 6th inning, still 1-0 and the Yanks have 1st and 2nd and nobody out with Cervelli up. This is a bunting situation! In fact it is almost the perfect bunting situation, only later in the game with the same score is it better. Instead Girardi allows Cervelli to hit into a DP that basically ended the inning. I was really ticked off.

A few other notes:

*Joba was not sharp, but I am getting tired of so many 3 ball sliders that could be walks if the batters lay off the pitch...THROW STRIKES! I don't care about a strikeout, I want an out!
*Cervelli has had a lot of troubles throwing of late (and what should have been a passed ball or 2). Today he threw one away as he bounced it, but he has not thrown well of late. i am not sure of the numbers, but I bet you they are not good of late. Also, I hated his pitch selection with Robertson. How is it possible that Robertson threw 20 pitches and they were all fastballs until finally throwing a curve when the guy was bunting? The Yanks were lucky to get out of the 10th inning the way Robertson was hit. In the 11th, Robertson hung an 0-2 curve for a single and that was a huge pitch.
*Losing in extra innings always stinks, but I am more concerned with the offense not doing a good job. They should be better.
*Granderson is not good against lefties and while he is a pretty good CF'r, as I stated at the beginning of the year, I think Gardner should be in CF. Gardner made a fantastic catch earlier in the game and I also think he has more range in CF and might have caught 2 balls that Granderson did not get to in the past 2 games.
*The Genius Maker was not sharp, but worked out of allowing 1 hit. he could have gotten out of the inning with a DP if Jeter wasn't so slow on getting the ball to Cano. I think it was the right move letting Rivera only throw the one inning.

6 comments:

  1. I just saw the post under the last blog where someone couldn't help but get all over Girardi for his not bunting with 1st and 2nd with nobody out. You are correct. BTW, I am glad I didn't see your post which I guess was left as I was writing mine

    ReplyDelete
  2. For now on ill sign my posts EG if u forgot Grubes. By the way the anonymous post was me!

    ReplyDelete
  3. How can you not bunt Cervelli there??? I say it's the worst move by Girardi all year.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It really was a bad move and Girardi's answer wasn't very good either. He said that Posada is slow so the bunt would have to be perfect to get him to 3rd. If he was that worried about Posada's speed he could have pinch run for him. I understand a little trepidation on Posada's speed, but Cervelli is a good bunter.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Who is the 3rd catcher on the team? Cervelli was at the plate. Anyways, he is a JA!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not sure I understand the question? I think Pena is actually the 3rd string catcher on the roster, but Posada was the DH so he could be replaced.

    ReplyDelete