Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Genius Maker post game 4 ALCS

I will apologize in advance for any expletives on this blog, but I have not been this upset with a manager since Torre decided not to start Mussina in game 4 against Boston up 3-0 in 04’.

I also want to point out the series is not over, but the odds are clearly against the Yanks winning.

I think I threw out about as many expletives, at my friends house no less, as I have in, well, I am not sure if I have ever thrown out more. Every time they showed Girardi I said one…

Let me go through the progression here because Girardi went from being a manager I thought did a good job with the pen, a decent job overall but someone who I just didn’t like his smugness, to a guy I would like off the team as skipper right now. In all my years of not liking the X and O style of Torre, I never made a statement like this. I did think it was time for Torre to leave at the end and “let someone else drive the Lamborghini,” and I also thought Girardi was the better choice between he and Mattingly (only because Mattingly didn’t have experience). But I am done with Girardi and have trouble rooting for him, which will be my own issue.

Going back, the way the team handled Joba was almost criminal, moving him all over the place. They changed their mind continuously and did a horrible job with Joba. This year, down the stretch, Girardi did an even worse job never sticking to any plan and constantly changing his mind time and time again and accomplished nothing. AWFUL job by Girardi down the stretch.

Cashman deserves some blame here as well because we needed a lefty killer and we needed another lefty (how many times did I say this?). When he got Kearns, I hated the move and stated as such…he didn’t do what we needed and he never got us another lefty, until Ring. But, while every team in baseball understands how significant it is to match up and allow flexibility in doing so (Texas added 2 lefties to make FOUR out of their pen), we decided we needed Moseley and Mitre on the team instead of a 2nd lefty that could give us flexibility and also make it harder for the opposing manager.

ON TO THE GAME…As you know, I have stated I wanted to pitch all of our guys on 3 days rest and I was very much against starting Burnett in game 4. I also wanted CC to pitch in game 4 no matter what so that he was available for game 7. When I heard they were starting Cervelli, the expletives started pre game in numerous texts. Against a righty Cervelli is a bad hitter. Not only that, how good of a “personal” catcher is Cervelli when he “managed” AJ to the worst ERA in the league? How much did his awful throwing to 2nd help the situation? How about his poor pitch calling ability? Why in the world would you want Cervelli in the game when we are struggling to get the offense going? This decision exacerbates an already horrible decision by Girardi and was pure idiocy.

Pre game, we had a discussion about the tough decision Girardi had to make going into game 4… I don’t disagree that this wasn’t an easy decision, but that is your fn’ job. IF, and again I don’t agree, you felt you had to start someone game 4, it would have been Moseley and not AJ…but again, it would have been CC if it were me. AJ could have been really good, but the odds of this were slim…but with his stuff you could never know. Either way, I made it clear in my blog that AJ needed to have a short leash and my brother put it well when he said “if AJ has a chance to allow 5 runs in the game Girardi is a jack hammer” (I might have cleaned that up).

So with that in mind, the thought was don’t allow him to get us too far behind and have an incredibly quick hook. Burnett did OK actually, and in the top of the 5th inning, my brother sticking to his guns (and I agreed) I would have taken out AJ when the score was 3-2 Yankees and there were 2 outs, 1st and 2nd and Hamilton up. Of course I would have brought in Ring here, but he was not on the roster. Girardi stayed with Burnett and he did get Hamilton out…whew! Big out. Now the Yanks get a nice rally going in the bottom of the 5th but in the long inning Tex goes out with a hammy and ARod hits into a DP and we get no runs in a long ½ inning.

I will now switch to my texting messages that were sent in the game and prior to anything happening…I wanted Moseley to start the 6th and 2 of my friends agreed, when Burnett came back out Girardi was REALLY pushing the limit. Remember last inning, he allowed 2 singles and a walk. 2 runs in 5 innings with AJ and I am thrilled. In fact, one would have to say that given what happened starting AJ was the right move…but take him out and say good job, let’s not push it.

BUT NO, Girardi decided to leave Burnett in. My comment was that if one guy gets on he is out of the game.

Oh, I need to go back and state that when Tex went out, I wanted Golson to go into the game because Golson could pinch run for Tex at 1st base and stay in for good defense. With a lead and he wouldn’t get up for 2-3 more innings it made sense and hopefully we had extended the lead by then (we had 2 men on and Golson could help get a run that inning. Girardi put in Thames instead. My feeling was if we gave back the lead and had a really big spot Thames could pinch hit with all the lefties they had.

So Burnett allows a lead off soft liner to RF that Thames didn’t move on and while he didn’t come close to the ball, Golson would have been playing a little more shallow and it was possible he would have caught the ball…maybe not, but possible. BTW, maybe Golson’s speed would have forced ARod’s DP to be mishandled too??? I may be grasping here, but clearly the moves Girardi made or didn’t make have long term impact. So while I want Burnett out of the game, he does get the next guy out on a fielder’s choice and then Kinsler flies out to CF and Cruz makes an excellent play to tag up and get to 2nd. I would have liked to see Granderson get behind that ball and make it tougher, but this was the play that turned Girardi into an absolute #%@$!!!! Murphy is up and he is a lefty platoon guy. I would bring in Ring if he were on the team to face Murphy, but we know this can’t happen. So I would bring in Logan (and said/texted as such) Logan was the move here and the only thing I can think of is that Girardi didn’t want to waste his one bullet of Logan in this spot…again, previous decisions rearing their UGLY head. So instead of pitching to Murphy, he decides to walk him??? I was livid over this and let everyone know. There are a few times putting the tying run on base makes sense…there is not a chance in heck this was one of them. For one, Burnett walks a lot of guys and hits them…that is one of his downfalls, but his stuff is good so why intentionally walk the guy? I know Molina is a not a good hitter, but he got a hit off of AJ already and has been swinging well. Burnett should never intentionally walk a guy IMO. So after the dumb move to walk him, every one knew Joba was coming in…right? For some asinine reason he sits Joba back down (I think he had been up twice already) and leaves Burnett in. We were all saying NO WAY, THIS IS STUPID. First pitch is a fastball away, but Burnett who has now thrown about 95 pitches misses and the fastball comes inside and Molina perhaps ends the Yankees season with a 3 run homer. That was it folks…Girardi for some reason stuck with AJ??? The guy with the highest ERA!!! I have no idea why and I am sure his comment will be “we” thought the matchup was blah blah blah…you know what Joe, you are an idiot! You took a top team and screwed it all up. You should lose your job because your job is to put your players in the best position so that they can be successful and you have failed miserably at it!

The offense deserves some blame here as well as they scored about the least possible runs you can score when you have 7 hits and 4 walks with a HR, a triple and a double mixed in…3 runs.

…the 8th inning said it all when the Yanks had bases loaded one out and Swisher got hit by the pitch, but they didn’t call it…this was huge non call as Swisher popped out only to have Berkman come up against the lefty. Here is the perfect time to bring in our lefty killer, but instead we have Kearns…Berkman who is simply awful against lefties stayed in the game because Kearns wasn’t even worthy of pinch hitting for a guy with an OPS of .517 against lefties (batting .171). Great pickup that Kearns (again decisions made previously)…Berkman did a nice job and hit the ball hard but a nice play by Young (give Texas credit, they have played very well in the field) ended any hopes.

We have our best 3 going and all we need to do is have each of them win, not out of the realm of possibilities, but the odds are slim folks and Girardi sucked the life out of me. It is inexcusable to for Girardi to allow Burnett to allow 5 runs in this game…absolutely inexcusable! Of course, he shouldn’t have been starting anyway.

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