This was a poorly umpired game. We got hurt on about 5 pitches including one
to ARod that was absurd. Oakland only had a real gripe
on one of the calls against them. We
also got a terrible call at first base where the guy couldn’t have been closer
than 2 feet from the first base bag when Swisher caught the ball and they
called him safe.
This game was lost by Kuroda (with help from the umps and
Nunez) though. Kuroda was not sharp
again and had little command of all of his pitches. Occasionally he made a good one, but the slider
backed up many times, his forkball was not in the zone long enough to get
swings at it and his fastball was not consistent (or as fast) as it has been.
With the score tied at 4 in the top of the 6th (Kuroda
had just allowed a run in the 5th), Nunez struck again with his 2nd
error of the game. Folks, he simply can’t
play defense…maybe he can learn it, but as I said previously, I just don’t see
the mechanics of even an average SS, which I would be thrilled with. He has the athleticism, but he is a mess and
you can’t have him play defense unless it is an emergency. Anyway, Kuroda got the first two guys to
ground out but they had a runner on 2nd and 1 out thanks to Nunez. After getting a fly out, Pennington lined a 2
out 2 strike single to LF and we couldn’t come back.
Jeter, who will have to play SS at some point because Nunez
can’t, has had a few struggles in key spots the last week. He has left a runner in scoring position and
2 outs numerous times. The entire team
is struggling, but even Jeter has an OPS of .730 and a batting average of only
.273 in late and close situations. I use
the batting average in that spot only because sometimes a single is almost as
important as a double.
I looked up some of the “clutch” stats on players and one
that was odd was ARod’s. With 2 outs and
RISP he has been awful (.514 OPS only 42 AB’s), but his late and close numbers
(defined as 7th inning or later AB’s with the batting team tied,
ahead by one, or the tying run on deck) he has an OPS of .881 and a .321
batting average…he also is very good in high leverage situations (basically pivotal
points in games).
Just repeating what I have said many times that many of my
readers still disagree with me on…while there is little validity to clutch ability
(meaning the ability to consistently raise your level of play at critical
times), there are clutch performances (getting an important hit). ARod has been the poster child of “unclutch”
hitting and Jeter is the definition of clutch for some people (on
baseball-reference it says Jeter is also known as “Mr. November or Captain
Clutch”)
Take a look at the below
Career OPS Numbers: 2
out RISP Late and Close High Leverage Post Season
ARod = .860 .899 .965
.884
Jeter = .834 .791 .824
.839
Note: ARod is a better hitter than Jeter so you could expect
him to be better in all of the categories, as he is. However, most of the people on the ARod is a
choker band wagon would always say they would rather Jeter up instead of ARod…and
that is simply wrong.
Note 2: I want to
also point out that while I may seem more critical than most on Jeter, I think
Jeter is 100% class and is and should be the poster child for every young baseball
player to emulate. I tend to take the
counter point of the opinions of people, who because Jeter is a great guy, give
a bias toward Jeter’s legend because they want it to grow. I also think (I am sure about this) when people
like someone, they overlook when something goes wrong and when it goes well
they inflate it. Of course, the counter
to that is when they don’t like someone and something goes wrong, they get into
the “there is so and so choking again mode.”
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Baltimore lost and Texas won
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