The Genius Maker #32 (1000th Game)

I was at the game yesterday and when at the game you don't get the pitch by pitch feel as well as on TV, but one thing that stood out being at the game was the booming wood sound of Andrew Jones' two homers. They had that great ball on wood sound that was unmistakable.

Other comments:

First and foremost, the 1000th game for The Genius Maker and the first to do it with the same team. I failed to get a good picture of the Yankee scoreboard when they put up Mo's picture with a 1000 next to it (I cut the 1000 to 100 and thus ended my career as a photographer)

The Genius Maker has the most postseason saves in baseball history and has more World Series saves than any other reliever. He is the 15th pitcher in major league history to appear in 1,000 games.

Mariano's quote, "It's a blessing to be able to be on the same team and do that. It's not too often you see that. But the most important thing is that we won. It is because you've got to have the right combination. The organization you're with (has to be) willing to keep you and you've got to do the job and take care of yourself. All of that has to be in place."

ESPN wrote this and I thought it was worth posting,

"Rivera has won five World Series with the Yankees and has appeared in the postseason 15 times. He has a record 42 career saves in the playoffs -- 11 of which came in the World Series. He owns a 0.71 ERA in 94 postseason games, the lowest playoff ERA of all time for pitchers with at least 30 innings. He also has 14 career two-inning playoff saves."

Girardi recalled on Wednesday the first time he caught Rivera in 1996.

"I had to catch him in the bullpen and I'm like, 'Who's this kid?'" Girardi said. "His stuff was electric. He was throwing 97 (mph), throwing it wherever he wanted to. He could cut, he could elevate. I'd never even heard of him."


Final game comments:

I would have left Robertson out to pitch the 8th inning. I don't get why Girardi would want to take Robertson out of the game when he looked sharp and threw a grand total of 4 pitches to get 2 outs and get us out of a jam. We had a 4 run lead, but what if Joba was off? Then what? Girardi never asks that critical question. Many people would say, well they won, what are you worried about? But, the job of the manager is to limit the chance it does hurt you. Why not let Robertson continue and if nothing else you get a few more outs and maybe you save Joba for extra innings (if that happens). Maybe Robertson just hands it off to Rivera for the 9th as I believe Girardi wanted to get him some work. The original point is the main one though, why take Robertson out??? Silly.

Garcia pitched the exact type of game I would want (and maybe expect) out of him. he went 6.1 innings with 3 runs allowed (4.26 ERA) while allowing more hits than innings, but he didn't hurt himself with any walks. A pitcher who can do this for the Yanks will win many of his games as the offense (which is under performing) should outscore the competition.