The Walking Wounded

I want to start with last night’s game (Sunday).  Paxton was excellent as he had an excellent breaking ball and great control.  His fastball hit 97 once but most of the night was around 95/96 (less than the 98 he was dealing against the Red Sox), but he located it very well.  He worked in changing speeds and elevations great.  After 6 innings we had a 5-0 lead (thanks to a 3 run bomb by Frazier) and Paxton was throwing well but threw 95 pitches.  I felt that he should come out of the game and save him as at most you would get another inning out of him.  Instead, Boone stuck with him and he allowed a double and a walk and then took him out.  While pitches are important, starting another inning is a lot to me, when you have to rest and go back out there when you are near your end, I just thought it was time to shut him down.  Fortunately, Kahnle did a good job (his control was very good and his change had good movement) and got us out of the inning with no runs.  He had thrown 17 pitches and I felt it was fine to take him out.  Unfortunately, Green was awful again allowing a cheap popup (that a better fielding 1B, or at least one with more speed, might have caught, but Ford was playing there) a walk and a single.  Britton was warming up prior, but for some reason, Boone went with Ottavino with a switch hitter who is equal both ways and then a lefty in Gordon?  The matchups were one reason, but also the fact Britton was up made me wonder why he didn’t go with him?  I could see if the matchups were more righties than that could override it.  Regardless, Ottavino had nothing and allowed a double and then a HR to Gordon to tie the game at 5.  Then he allowed a HR to Dozier and we were now down by 1.  Really terrible job by Ottavino, but also Boone messed that up.

In the bottom of the 8^th, Tauchman led off with a double, but Urshela and Ford got out moving Tauchman to 3^rd.  Romine came through with a big 2 out single tying the game!  He was fortunate to get a fastball in the inside part of the plate but perfect height.

Chapman pitched the 9^th and looked pretty good; he allowed a single and 2 SB’s, but he got out of the inning.  The odd thing was he threw 18 straight fastballs.  Part of that was the speedy Hamilton was on the base, but he stole the bases anyway and you have to get the batter. 

Britton came in anyway to pitch the 10^th and got the job done, he did tweak his groin when he covered on a rundown, but he stayed in the game…hopefully he won’t be yet another on the IL (BTW, when did the DL become the IL, I must have missed that memo?)

In the 10^th the Royals brought in a lefty who threw hard but could not find the plate and he walked Tauchman and Urshela to start the inning and now the lefty Ford was up.  I would have brought Ford up to the plate to see if he would leave the pitcher out there as a righty was up there.  In my opinion, there was no way they would leave this guy in there even to face a lefty, but Boone just made the move to bring Thairo Estrada for his first major league AB.  Kennedy was brought in to face him and Estrada put down a perfect bunt.  Based on the hitter we had, I was OK with bunting, but I would have tried to bluff the Ford AB.  Regardless, it worked as Romine came through again with what would have been a deep fly out, but with the OF correctly in, it beat the OF for a deep single and the victory.

Overall, the only bad move was not bringing in Britton and it ended up hurting us today.  The other moves were only my preference and could be debated.

Switching to the Friday game, CC struggled with is control but fought through it walking 4 but not allowing an ER.  Gardner had a good game, but we saw some bad fielding by CC and then a few bad plays by Voit of which one earned him an error and the other gave a guy a hit.  The bullpen did a good job and held onto the 6-2 win.

Saturday, Voit let another ball go under his glove for a triple and that should have been an error if you ask me.  Tanka worked his way through that and gave us 7 good innings without his best stuff.  We hit 4 HR’s, but the big news was Judge being added to the injured list and I think this could be a month.

It is crazy the amount of injuries we have.   Our 8 position players out are: Judge, Hicks and Stanton in the OF, and our infield that is out would be Bird at 1^st, we will put Tulo at 2^nd base, Didi at SS and Andujar at 3^rd base and we round out the team with Sanchez out.  Of course, we still have Betances and Severino out as well.

Onto 4 games against the 9-14 Angels.