The Genius Maker 5-19

Friday’s game showed Pettitte having a huge difference in stuff compared to his first start.  I know Cinci is not a juggernaut, but Andy’s cutter was moving like crazy.  In fact, Stewart had another passed ball when it kept running on him.  While Stewart has had too many PB’s for his lack of offense, he made as good a throw you will see when he backhanded a short hop and got rid of the ball lightning quick and made a perfect throw that could be caught and tagged at the same time to get a guy that had a good jump…it was a thing of beauty.

Other notes from Thursday:

• Granderson made an excellent running catch in CF
• The RISP issue is everywhere and it is just one of those stat cycles that happen and it gets exacerbated when the y guys start to press.  I always wonder why teams throw Swisher fastball’s when he will swing at junk in the dirt all the time with RISP, but they do
• Cano made a terrible base running play trying to get to 2^nd base after a single with a runner on 1^st.  Instead of 1^st and 3^rd with nobody out we had a man on 3^rd with one out.  Bad decision!
• We had a ball call against us when we didn’t score with bases loaded and nobody out where they threw home yet the catchers foot was not on the bag.  When you are going bad it seems the calls don’t go your way either

Friday’s game was one where playing Ibanez finally caught up top us in the field as he allowed a double on a play that should have been routinely caught as the ball just kept going away from him.  That double did allow a run to score, but at least he doubled later on to try and make up for it…this is a liability that will catch up to us soon.  It is pretty pathetic that we don’t have anything better than Wise to play the OF!  At least he can filed, but he can’t hit a lick; at least get a guy up who was hot in the minors and maybe we can ride a hot streak for a little.  Ion a game like last night one hit could have won the game for us.  We came back to lose 6-5 and Jeter had huge AB’s late and couldn’t come through.

Swisher was waving at two curves and then they threw him some fastballs and he got a hit.  Bad scouting.  ARod hit a ball that would have been gone if it was the old ARod, instead it fell to the warning track.

Finally, in the last inning with us trailing 6-3 and Ibanez on 2^nd base, Swisher singled and Robby Thompson waived Ibanez home; the throw ended up being weak and off line.  Assuming the weakness is why Thompson sent him home, if the throw would have hit the cut off Ibanez would have been out as it was if online he would have been out…I have no idea what is wrong with Thompson but that is inexcusable…there is NO reason to send him there…none!

We need to get one more player on this team.  Gardner will help a lot (and I think people are seeing the value of him now), but it is not unreasonable that we get one guy out in an injury and we can’t be so hamstrung with liabilities on the bench.  I think the pitching will be OK even with the injuries as long as Robertson can come back, but I think we will need a bat as Ibanez is playing better than we could have hoped and while ARod could get a little better and Tex surely can, one could say that Jeter has been over performing.  I am ok playing it out some more as I think we are underperforming overall.

BTW, Chapman pitched and wow does he have an explosive fastball, he blew Cano away.