The Genius Maker #6

It was very good to see the Yankees jump right back after the loss to the Red Sox. The offense did the job as Martin has really looked great so far hitting 2 dingers. Cano got his offense going but struggled defensively missing a soft liner in the 2nd inning and failing to turn a double play that led to the Sox scoring 2-3 more runs that inning.

Interestingly Pedroia, who had an outstanding game, made a subtle nice tag out on Jeter on an attempted steal by letting the ball go all the way to Jeter's helmet as he tagged him out. I say this because I always get on Jeter for fielding throws in front of the bag and then having to bring the tag back. Pedroia also made a phenomenal play on a grounder in between 1st and 2nd where he ranged far to his left and dove into RF and caught the ball behind him, then jumped up and threw out Tex.

Speaking of defense, Jeter missed a throw to 2nd the other day and he has looked weaker on popups having Gardner and Jones come a long way from LF to get ones Jeter used to call off and make.

I thought the ump was very bad and inconsistent today. He had 15+ calls I didn’t agree with; it didn’t favor either side, he just was poor.

Nova had very little sink on his fastball and he tried to gut threw it. If Cano could have turned 2 his numbers would have looked a lot better, but he had trouble with his key pitch and couldn’t make it out of the 5th. Robertson did a real nice job before handing it to Joba. I was really pleased with Joba throwing 94-97 as it made a difference in his slider as the batters had to commit much earlier and even excellent hitter like Youklis were waving at the slider. This is the part about speed people don’t realize. It is not just the fastball that is better when he is throwing 95 consistently; it is how it impacts the other pitches because of how the batter must react. The same is about the 4 or so MPH Hughes has lost. BTW, Joba threw a change today and that is good to see. He didn’t control it but I am in favor of giving it a shot. BTW, Bucholz has a great change and has really good stuff if he can harness it.

Let’s take the series tomorrow with CC against Beckett