The Genius Maker #71

Friday’s game marked a crazy situation that had CC allow more homers in any game in his career. Honestly, I didn’t think CC looked all that bad and you have to give credit to TB; they seemed to know what was coming as they were hitting 95+ MPH fastballs and adjusting to the off speed stuff. I don’t think his change has had the sink it normally does, but that has been the case previously as well. Just move on.

The only other comment about this game was a play at the plate with Swisher. He decided to go around the tag with hand going across home plate and I am positive if he would have gone in straight and hard he would have reached the plate. As many of the veteran readers here have seen me write I usually do not like the slide that Swisher did and most of the Yankees do. I think it loses them 3-4 feet in getting to home plate first and also doesn’t jostle that catcher or give him any fear to block (they know the Yankees are wussing out). I will say though that one time Jeter did do what I like and he got stuffed by the catcher, but that was because the catcher was in better position than normal. There are more effective slides for different situations, but I think the Yankees have lost a lot of plays at the plate with poor choices of slides…Swisher’s was one of them.

Saturday saw two positive events in that Hughes pitched well. He still didn’t look real strong to me, but he was effective and only walked one batter. I think what was positive is that he was able to make the change a very important part of his repertoire and that is huge because the cutter is just OK and the fastball is about the same along with curve so having the change gives him 4 average pitches and if he can change it up and spot them without walking guys he could be OK. Obviously, a few more MPH makes all the pitches better…either way he did well.

Hip Hip Jorge! Kudos to Girardi for finally hitting the right button (you would think he would hit them more often as he tries so many different things) and putting Jorge in the lineup. Posada delivered big time with 6 RBI’s! BTW, yes it is 6 RBI’s and not 6 RBI. Not sure why people wants to change that regardless of what the acronym stands for. Maybe this was just one final hurrah for Posada, but I was glad he came through for us. I was mentioning to someone that I was surprised he feel off so badly and thought he would be a little better, but if they wanted to move on they should let Posada know of their decision and ask him how he would like it handled…maybe even allow him to catch one final game at home? OR…maybe he gets hot for us and we ride him a little bit? Just being used against righties is not a lot of flexibility, but let’s see where it takes us. I don’t think people realize that Jorge has not been so awful; in fact his OPS is .701…the same as Jeter. But at DH we are looking for more…and of Jeter as well.

Some other notes: Jeter has had so nay lucky hits this year and that does not bode well for the future. I know he has been better of late, so I hope he continues, but he seems to get a lot of the same type of hits as guys do against Rivera.

Russell Martin has been swinging at the first pitch like crazy of late. I counted that over the past week he has been swinging at the first pitch about 75% of the time. This is unofficial, but I am positive it is more often that he should…especially when his OPS is .627 when he puts the ball in play on that swing; I haven’t looked at others but I would be that is really bad. (Update: I looked at Jeter and Gardner only and they were something like .840 and 1.016 respectively)

Yanks are half a game back on Boston as the Sox lost their series to Seattle