The Genius Maker #85

The Yankees get off to a 3-0 and 4-1 lead and then the offense went to sleep - no hits for the final 6 innings of the game!

Baltimore chipped away all game scoring one run every other inning and combined with some spotty defense, a tough ump and some questionable managerial decisions we blew the game.

Cervelli had a bad throw on a dribbler in front of the plate that led to a 2nd and 3rd situation with 1 out. Nova did a good job getting out of the jam though. He had trouble with the consistency of his breaking ball but did pretty well overall. Logan was brought in a little premature if you ask me as Nova had just allowed a bloop double (caused by Swishers sore hand and weak arm). Logan continued his struggling of late and allowed a double making the score 4-3. Logan appears to be throwing more over the top which has flattened his breaking ball and his velocity was not 94-95, it as 91.

Of course Laffey was brought in to face his lefty and he walked him…where are our lefties? Later this inning, Cano made one of the best relay throws you will ever see as he transferred the ball like lightning and threw a strike to Cervelli who caught the ball and then got his head taken off by Markakis, but held on.

Soriano had a one run lead in the 8th and didn’t do his job, in fact he was awful and if not for another thrown out runner at home and a stupid decision they tried to steal 3rd with 2 outs and were thrown out, it would have been much worse. Soriano got one batter out and allowed 3 singles, but the outs on the bases gave us another chance to win this tie ball game. Now instead of seeing what our youngsters have in Kontos and Brackman (who are both up), Girardi again decides to use Proctor??? I don’t know what the fascination is with Proctor, but his fastball is straight and his control isn’t good. Overall he throws hard and usually has a decent curve ball, but hasn’t Rivera taught us how important location is? Proctor allowed a single and a walk but got out of it. Surely we now see what our rookies will do…right?

Proctor starts the 10th and ends the game allowing a single, walk and single.

I think not resting the starters in Wednesday’s game impacted the win here; the team went to sleep after the early start. Girardi gets a lot of blame here. Just to be clear, it is not Girardi’s fault that Soriano didn’t do the job, but it is his fault for setting up the game with such little room for error. In fact, this is why Rivera is called the Genius Maker because he covered up all the bad moves by Torre and won/saved so many games…nobody questions much after a win. Well I do and I know some of you have said why do I get upset after a win and my answer is because you might not get lucky next time and you have to have a plan (that can be adjusted), but it should be a consistent philosophy. Girardi is all over the place and it drives me crazy…almost as crazy as handing so many important inning to a guy who just got released from the NL (Proctor)

Boston lost so we still have a 2.5 lead