Pitchers Duel

This was a very good pitchers duel (Tanaka and Zimmerman), while each pitcher did make some mistakes, the majority of their pitches were on the black or just off the plate.  It was not a coincidence the score was 1-1 into the 9^th and only after a sac fly and a very bad break where the ball hit the bag and caused a double on what would have been an out. 

There were a lot of important and interesting AB’s, but I want to credit Frazier for laying off some good sliders and getting the ball to the OF and getting the sac fly.

Tanaka had a lot left in the tank as you could see he was starting to use his fastball more as the game went on and hit 94 (highest of the night) in the 7th as he started to let it loose, but I did feel it was good to bring in Ottavino to face the righties.  Ottavino looked great as he got a strikeout to end the 7th and then struck out their 2and 3 hitters, but with a lefty up I thought Britton would be used.  This goes against some of my thoughts of sticking with someone when they are hot, but it was just a feeling.  Their lefty hit one up the middle that got deflected and we barely got the out so it worked out to leave him in, but I would have handled it differently.  By handling it differently, Chapman would not have pitched the 9th in my scenario, but that is not really Boone's fault that Chapman had some control issues and after a walk, he threw a 95 MPH pitch down where a guy got his first major league hit.  This was Chapman's fault!   Chapman is really good, but he has the same issue as Betances sometimes where they just can't locate at all; very frustrating watching those struggles.

The lineup lacked juice with Wade at 2^nd base, Tauchman in LF, Romine behind the dish.  Frazier was the DH.  Further, Voit hasn’t been lining up the ball that well so we really didn’t have much juice.  I stated that Voit showed to be a real hitter and I didn’t think last year was a fluke, but he hasn’t been that sharp so far this year.  He did get hit on the hand so he may need a day or 2 to rest, but we need him with Stanton out.    Gardner is off to a bad start as well and he has to play with Hicks out.  Gleyber isn’t hitting much either, but a lot of the issues can be the cold as well; this is not really baseball weather.  This is why I hate having home games early, I would much rather them be on the road against the toughest opponents; these games early in the year in the cold are not good indications of how good or bad teams are so I would rather play the toughest out of division games on the schedule and be on the road.

I neglected to write about the excellent catch Judge made Monday night that might have saved the game.  His defense is really good when you combine his solid ability to get to the ball, his height and his great arm.

At least Boston lost 1-0