Awful Performance Against An Awful Team

 The worst team in baseball came into Yankee stadium and lost a very close first game followed by beating us twice!  How did this happen?

Saturday - In general, we did not swing the bats well at all.  3 hits against a weak pitching team are not going to get it done.  If it wasn't for one of the very times Gallo has gotten a big hit for with a 2 run HR in the bottom of the 8th to tie the score, our offense would have been putrid.  For some reason Chapman was brought into the game in a tie game at home, which surprised me, but here is where the game was officially lost.

On a 1-2 count, Sanchez correctly called for a splitter, but was incredibly not prepared for a splitter that might have been in the dirt and then when it was he acted like he was afraid of the ball by turning his head and instead of smothering it he stayed very high on it and the ball got by him for a wild pitch.  I am sorry, that lack of effort and readiness was embarrassing.  If the ball would have gotten by him but he gave a great effort I would have said it was a bad break, but as I have said numerous times, why be on one knee with nobody on base...and especially with a splitter coming?  I should have taken a screen shot of the play, but I am sick of hearing the announcers say he had no shot at a pitch in the dirt...that is the catchers job to block it and as long as they can get their body around it they should be able to knock it down enough to throw a batter out at first.  Sometimes you can throw them out if you hustle and it gets by you as we say Higgy do the other day.  This play set the entire inning up negatively and the rest was on Chapman, but don't dismiss this misplay by Sanchez.

Sunday - Up 4-1 as Sanchez turned on an inside FB at 93 MPH after inexplicably throwing him 9 straight fastballs???  Seriously, this had to be because he is the 9th place hitter, but it was very odd that Sanchez didn't get anything else or catch up to some of these hittable pitchers sooner.  That being said, it was a huge hit that this offense really needed!

In the 6th inning, Torres stayed back on a ball and then took a few shuffle steps and then flipped the ball to 1B and the runner beat the throw.  That is just not being mentally prepared.  Remember early in the year, he kept taking his time and then when he got a sense of urgency, his defense went from bad to acceptable? First, why is that not an error?  A routine ground ball that you stayed back on and then took an extra step before you flipped a throw to first instead of firing it?  That is an error in my book and it is not a question. I don't know what the % of making that play is but I would say that it is probably in the very high 90's, that is an error!  Abreu then serves up a 2 run HR on an awful pitch selection by Sanchez and him.  Throw the freaking fastball there.  Terrible pitch call!

BTW, earlier in the game, Sanchez got a throwing error that should be changed to Torres as the throw was there and Torres tried to make a quick tag and the ball ticked off his glove.  Torres is actually very quick and good with his tags and he just was s a little early, but that should not have been an error on Sanchez.

Still leading after Sanchez hits another HR, this time a 2 run shot, when their bad pitching was trying to go to the outside of the strike zone and instead threw a FB inside and Gary met the pitch again.  One has to take advantage of bad pitching and Gary gave us a chance to win with his offense and 6 RBI's (The same number of RBI's he had since 7/21) .

Then the Yankees stuck with Heaney way too long.  Up 7-4, Heaney hit Mancini and then allowed a soft hit and a line drive single to load the bases with nobody out.  The balls were not crushed, but why have your weakest (or one of them) pitcher out there with bases loaded and nobody out in the 7th inning of a 7-4 game?  I feel like I have been asking a lot of questions...

Heaney then allowed a well hit ball that Stanton took a bad angle on, but it wasn't an easy play.  This double score 2 runs and one would think that would be the night for Heaney...but no they kept him much to my disgust.  But sometimes the wrong move works and he got the week hitting Severino to pop up on the 1st pitch.  Mateo then had a great AB fouling off pitch after pitch before singling on his 12th pitch.  That finally ended Heaney's night but Peralta allowed a single before getting the final 2 outs and  now we were down by one.

We still had 1/3 of the game to come back against the worst team in baseball, but we did not score.  Judge was 0-9 and Stanton 0-8 with a walk in these last 2 games.

Time to turn the page and get after a solid Toronto team!