First, I was away on business and couldn’t post and in fact
missed the entire 2nd game (I know crazy – did watch on video after
the fact)
I know I predicted a win against Baltimore
and that we would lose to Detroit;
so why am I so down? Why are all of us
feeling like this series is over? The obvious
hits us in the face; Hughes is going against Verlander in the next game; this
is a mismatch on paper. The other
obvious part is this offense has gone into a terrible slump at a bad time and
to make it worse; it is not because we have faced some great pitching. The Yankees have had a lot of VERY hittable
pitches that they have either taken for strikes or missed; it has been bad
hitting not good pitching.
Why have any optimism?
Think about it, we hit about as poor as possible; it simply can’t be
worse as almost everyone outside of Ichiro and Ibanez (and Tex) are underperforming at epic levels. With that in mind, we went into extra inning
in game 1 and were really only down 1-0 in game 2. If a couple calls and or breaks go our way we
could have won both games. Some hard hit
balls find a hole and we are in business.
If Swisher plays 2 or 3 balls better we may win too.
Detroit
has not played that well. Maybe that is
worse for us, but I think it is more of a silver lining. I have some odd feeling we will hit Verlander…there
is no logic behind this though as our offense is horrible and Verlander has
been lights out. In his last 6 games, he
has pitched 44 innings and allowed only 31 hits and 3 earned runs.
Hard to understand how Robinson Cano can break a post season
record for hitless AB’s…crazy.
Granderson, Swisher and ARod have been bad and Chavez has been 0-11 in
trying to replace ARod. Grandy and Swish
have not been replaced and I think Gardner
has to be looked at as a spark.
Verlander is a fastball pitcher and normally both are good fastball
hitters so waiting until game 4 may be the answer though?
What about our starters?
Does it make sense to skip Hughes altogether so that we finish with CC,
Pettitte, Kuroda, CC and Pettitte all on 3 days rest? It clearly is an option, but it is hard to
know what Kuroda and Pettitte could do…Kuroda already pitched well on short
rest, but could he do it again? Hughes
scares me, even if he pitched well against Baltimore,
I think Baltimore
didn’t swing the bats well. I would skip
him and have a sense of urgency.
Switching gears to something Girardi said. First, his arrogance in press conference
still pisses me off, but I have to say that he can’t be blamed for what has
happened to the offense. He has pushed
the buttons as best as possible. Of course,
he should be blamed for having Robby Thompson on 3rd and other
situations, but not this Detroit
series (he better be correct about Hughes).
Anyway, he was talking about using instant replay for close calls on the
bases. I am not a fan of IR in football
and I think the balance of flow in the game has been jeopardized and football
is a timed game very different than baseball.
Girardi said something that I have said in the past but had
forgotten. He said in the time it took
him to argue a call they could have replayed the play. I think in baseball where time is not an
issue and flow really isn’t either IR makes more sense. Further, it is more easily reviewed compared
to football where you can’t review every single player who is holding or whatever. The idea that coaches can go out and argue a
call is kind of silly when you think about it.
They could make calls just like balls and strikes where you can’t argue
them, but you can request a review (x times a game). I think it would actually speed up the game
as the arguing takes longer than a review and getting rid of the arguing would probably be good as kids must watch that and scratch their heads.
Swisher being booed.
I don’t understand why people boo other than for lack of effort or not
running all out. The Yankees all have
had situations where they were not running hard all the way and while it doesn’t
matter usually, there were a few times where it might have mattered (Tex and Cano come to
mind). What does booing accomplish; don’t
you want your player to do better?
I think Yankee fans are down for a bunch of reasons, but I think that the main reason people are down is the Jeter injury.
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough that they're not hitting. Now, the captain and face of the Dynasty, who also happens to be one of the few people who was hitting OK, is done for the year. The following game, the team puts up a 0. How can you not feel despair?
An extension of this is that we lost Mariano earlier this year. We're watching the Yankees now, and neither he nor Jeter are playing. We are reminded that, even though they will probably both be back next year, there's going to be a time soon where we have seen our last signature jump throw and the last bat broken in two by a whiffleball-like cutter.
And there's more than just sorrow that our beloved players will soon be retiring. When Mattingly retired, the future was looking good for the Yankees. But today, a lot of Yankees fans (including myself) are concerned about the future.
The Yankees are preaching the fact that they're on a budget like never before. If this is true, the A-Rod contract will make it very hard for them to land any serious free agents. Unless there is a huge flood of talent in the minors and ready to step up the way Jeter, Mariano, Bernie, Jorge, and Andy did in the mid 90s, the Yankees could be entering another era no more successful than the Mattingly era. And without George willing to break the bank to pull them out of it, that era might last for a while.
Watching Jeter being helped off the field on Saturday triggered a lot of thoughts in the heads of most Yankees fans. They're feeling despair, sorrow, and concern for both the present and the future. It's more than being down 2-0 to the Tigers: it's a whole bigger picture.