The Genius Maker #59

My ramblings from Tuesday’s TB game

As I suspected after last game, I was not too worried about Colon as you can tell he is still feeling his way back from his hammy. He threw pretty well last night and worked in a few changes and showed a good breaking ball as well. His fastball never reached 95, but he did hit 94 twice and was mostly at 93 with his running fastball at 91-92. His control was much better last night as well. TB is not a big hitting team so he was aided there, but he looked good. He did lose about 2 MPH from the stretch so there is still a little “feeling” to get back; but it was encouraging. At the end of the day the results were good and could have been really good if not for some very bad luck.

Girardi took Colon out at the right time and brought in Logan. Logan looked very sharp (threw 94-95) as he came in with 1st and 2nd and 1 out in the 7th inning (the Yanks winning 2-1).

I want to back track for a moment to get a comment in…The Yanks offense did not do a good job. Once again Jeter leading off against a righty looked awful and was up in a key spot in the top of the 7th with 1st and 2nd and 2 outs and then 2nd and 3rd after a double steal. He looked totally overmatched and weakly grounded out to first in this key spot. He is behind the fastball and ahead of the off speed stuff. I said it last year and expected this year he would slow his bat up and drop it on his shoulder similar to Swisher and ARod, but he simply refuses to make adjustments and he is hurting us (along with Girardi’s stubborn stupidity to keep hitting his head against the wall)

OK, back to Logan. Logan did his job getting a high pop up to CF that Granderson just lost in the absurd dome. It was a terrible break in the game and instead of 1st and 2nd with 2 outs it was bases juiced. Logan got the next guy to hit a grounder up the middle that he should have fielded for a probable DP or he could have just let it go and it would have been a DP…instead he reacted a little late and then reached up and it tipped off his glove for an error. He might have been thinking about letting it go and then decided to play it at the last 2nd, but it was a shame as the worse result happened. The next guy pops up weakly but perfectly in between Granderson, Jeter and Cano, but Granderson made a sliding catch but was not expecting immediately the guy to tag from 3rd and then threw wildly home for the game winning run. I know Grandy was just trying to catch the ball first, but he could have been slightly more aware…hard to kill him for it though because he has to make the catch first.

BTW, I still go back to what I said last year and that is Gardner should be in CF. I think his speed would have gotten to a bunch of balls the Granderson didn’t reach and this is one of those cases where Gardner would have been in better position to stop the run form scoring…Maybe Girardi will finally come around on that one as well.

The Yankee offense did not perform well and with Jeter leading off against a righty and the huge drop off from ARod to Nunez the Yankee offense is not getting it done. Martin hit the final out to the warning track BTW and just missed it.

Gardner had another excellent offensive game going 2-3 and seeing a lot of pitches and also picking up another 2 SB’s. The TB catcher took too long to release the ball on steals. I have to look back and what I said Gardner would have on total SB’s if he led off, but he has really come on and it would have been nice if he had the extra AB instead of Jeter. UPDATE: I did look back and 3 weeks ago I found this comment about Gardner and his SB’s, “Gardner is on pace for only 40 SB’s. I felt he was a lock for 50 if he played every day. I still think he could have a shot at 50 if he leads off.” Right now he will get to 50 as long as he stays healthy and even if Girardi continues to be stubborn about the lineup. BTW, I also saw myself as a broken record saying Gardner should be leading off against righties…

At least Boston lost too.