Saturday, April 27, 2013

4-27



First things first…those veterans to the blog know I used to talk about how some catchers and Posada was one of them, would expose their throwing hands to foul tips when they didn’t need to with nobody on base.  This happened all the time and I would point out how this was bad and while it doesn’t happen often why risk it?  The Catcher should have his throwing hand behind his back with nobody on and only with 2 strikes should the hand come out on a ball on the dirt – you have plenty of time to do that; in fact, you really have enough time if the runner steals to bring your hand out if you want to hide it for those situations as well, but many times you think he is stealing and you just have to take the chance and expose it.  However, why expose it for no reason other than just being lazy?  Well there was Cervelli’s hand exposing itself for no reason at all and he got a foul tip and instead of a good hitter (or at the least a hot hitter) we get a huge downgrade.  It amazes me that nobody says anything until after the injury.  I wish people would have read the blog because Cervelli would not be hurt. 

I am concerned about CC.  He was throwing 89-91 most of the game and when he tried to dial it up he got up to…92.  After he got a big strike out he looked back at the scoreboard (I assume to check the radar gun) and shook his head.  Hard to explain the sudden loss in velocity, but all I can say is it seems that is a common occurrence on our team.  CC also had poor command of his pitches, making a lot of poor 0-2 or 1-2 pitches and missing spots.  Toronto should have hit him more,  CC had very little but gutted out an 8 inning performance where he got some help from Gardner and some obstacles from Stewart behind the dish.  In the same inning, Stewart let a passed ball by him moving a runner to 3rd with one out.  The next flied a shallow/medium fly ball to Ichiro in RF who took his jump 2 extra steps (too long in my opinion), but he did throw a one hop bullet strike to Stewart who tagged the runner but the ball popped out and the runner barely, and I mean barely if he actually touched slid his one or 2 fingers across the black side of the plate.  The slo mo was not conclusive, but it appeared the angle would have barely touched the side of the plate…and Stewart would have tagged him out if the ump had ruled he didn’t touch the plate.

What a game by Hafner who got the start against lefty because Girardi finally realized that Francisco (Ben) isn’t that good against lefties…and boy did he respond,  After 2 straight walks, the pitcher fell behind Hafner 2-0 and hit a fastball on the outside corner.  On the 21- pitch Hafner sat fastball and ripped a 3 run homer into RC.  Later in the game, against Cecil (their lefty out of the pen), Hafner tripled to deep CF/RC and finished with 4 of our 5 RBI’s; Wells had the other. 

Joba came on for an eventful 1 run save.  He allowed 2 hits but was able to right the ship and end the game. 

One other note, CC has become a little bit of a liability in the field.  He slipped today and almost cost us a run on a play he should have been covering.  Later on he had a ball that was a pretty easy fielding play and he just didn’t (or couldn’t) bend down for the play.  He better regain some of his stuff because added to the poor fielding, he may not be dominant anymore.  That being said, he just won 4 games in the month of April for the 1st time in his career.

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