Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Genius Maker #55

Before I get into today’s game, there was something that happened in yesterday’s game that I was surprised about but forgot to write about it. It happened when I noticed that Dickerson did not pinch hit for Andrew Jones against a righty and then Jones stayed in to play RF. Why in the world would the Yanks not have Dickerson up when he is clearly their best defensive RF and also their best RF’r against righties with Swisher out? I don’t get it. I would get rid of one of the superfluous relievers.

Onto the Sunday game. This was the type of game I like (probably more than most people). Every pitch was important and we saw too excellent pitchers going at it. Shields was changing speeds with a lot of movement and CC was throwing gas from the 2nd inning on and also worked in a change and good curve. CC was awesome.

The game was going to be tight on runs and in the 3rd the Yanks played it like that as Nunez got on first base and then was bunted to 2nd by Jeter who beat the throw to first. I may be wrong here but I watched the replay a few times and I think Jeter fouled the bunt off his foot and then it trickled fair. Live, I thought something seemed odd and then I watched it a few times. Anyway, we got a break and with 1st and 2nd with nobody out Granderson sacrificed again. I didn’t love the call, but he might have done it on his own. Tex hit a very short fly ball to Upton who threw a strike home and nailed Nunez. Everyone ion this blog knows I don’t like Thompson as our 3rd base coach, but I didn’t have a huge issue with this as it took a good throw and tag to get him out. Live I thought it was too shallow, but I am not making a big deal about it. I was more upset at tex for getting out. BTW, I listened to Flaherty and Kay more than normal as I was working and they Kay was making a big deal about “all Tex had to do was direct the ball to SS and you get 2 runs” because the shift was on. Flaherty said he could direct the ball the other way, but if they are throwing off speed stuff inside to him, I am not sure he would do anything but pop out if he tried to hit to SS. There are times I think Tex should bunt for a hit but bunting past the pitcher is a little harder than bunting down the 3rd base line where a foul ball won’t kill you. Anyway, Tex didn’t get the job done.

In the 7th we caught a break where Upton could have doubled up Cano at 1st base with a good throw, but he aired it into the dugout moving Cano to 3rd with only one out. Unfortunately, Martin, who had a terrible offensive day, grounded out on the 1st pitch freezing Cano at 3rd. Then came the play of the night. Shields tried to pick Cano off of 3rd the way a lefty would try to pick a guy off at 1st and he threw the ball away. Kay and Flaherty (who I like a lot BTW) were both talking about what a bad move it was (mostly Kay) and then after I was saying how an average throw had Cano easily picked off, Flaherty finally said, a good throw might have had him…I was thinking what are they looking at? Cano was dead to rights there and you really have to say to yourself, Cano made 2 bad base running plays and TB threw the game away to us.

Of course that is because CC was throwing a gem and I was thrilled to see Girardi stick with CC for the 9th inning. Girardi was rewarded as on the final pitch of the night, CC threw his fastest fastball of the day – hitting 98 on the radar gun – and he threw it right past the batter! What a great game by CC!

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