Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Genius Maker 5-26


Don’t look now, but we have gone from last to 3rd with this 4 game winning streak and gone through the rotation with “quality starts.”  That is usually the way we get into some of those 20 game stretches where you can win 15 games.

Not to be contradictory, but I thought CC looked less sharp than he has in a while.  The 2.57 ERA had in the game last night allowing 2 runs in 7 innings and walking only 2 while allowing 7 hits didn’t tell the story to me though.  His fastball was 91-93 all night with a few at 90 and only a few at 94; he never hit 95.  His changeup was thrown from 85-87 and when you are only throwing 91 that is not enough of a discrepancy as you should have at least 7 MPH difference unless that day you have huge movement on it.  CC’s change is a big pitch for him and they didn’t use it too much (probably around 10% of the time) and I think it was because of the lack of fastball.  His control was a big spotty and his slider was not consistent either.  He threw 2/3 of his pitches for a strike which isn’t awful, but he just seemed to struggle all game and the Oakland lineup was too weak to take advantage of it.  They have Reddick as their only plus hitter.  CC is a horse, battles and did get better results in his last few innings, but his stuff was not sharp.

Our old friend Colon didn’t have his great movement on his fastball except for a few times and the Yanks pummeled him.  The offense played some small ball in moving the runners over with bunts and deep flies and the Yanks knocked them in from 3rd with less than 2 outs.  The best sequence was Stewart leading off with a single and Jeter bunted and was able to get a hit as he beat the 2nd baseman to the bag (bunt went down 1st and Weeks did not run full speed from the start).  With 1st and 2nd nobody out, Girardi didn’t ask Granderson to bunt but he made a productive out flying to reasonably deep LF and Stewart went to 3rd.  Then ARod hit a line drive to normal RF and we got a run.  It was nice to see.  Another thing that was nice to see was Tex getting involved in the offense.  He had 5 RBI’s (yes I put the ‘s at the end because saying 5 RBI just sounds wrong to me regardless of what the acronym is for) and 2 dingers.  Many people want to talk about all I care is about their production,” meaning are they driving in runs and while I don’t agree with that (my feeling is that if they are productive the runs and RBI’s will come from somewhere), Tex has 28 RBI’s while Cano and ARod have 20 and 19 respectively.

Stewart had another passed ball yesterday

Let’s get the final one in Oakland today and then we have 3 against the now streaking Angels with the great starting pitching and Pujols starting to get going after an inexplicably horrendous start.  He has an OPS of 1.215 over the past 7 days (28 AB’s), but his overall OPS is still a Martin like .671.

Thank you to all the people who allow people like me to write this blog and enjoy the freedoms we all do!   

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