The Genius Maker 7-22

I don’t want to get into many of the details that bothered me the last few days because overall, we just lost some very close games.  But, two things stood out to me Sunday.  1) The game could have been won early on with Ibanez up and runners on 2^nd and 3^rd with 2 outs, but he failed to get the runners home.  Colon was struggling and the bullpen was ready to come in.  Getting out of that kept them in the game. 

Then after the Yanks offense didn’t do anything from the 4^th inning on; Soriano was not able to hold the lead, but at least he didn’t give it up.  Notice I have not listed my 2^nd issue yet…but here goes; 2) Girardi goes to Phelps to start the 10^th.  First of all, and I wrote this the other day, Phelps should be in the rotation.  Second, he should be ion the rotation, because he is the most deserved to be there and 3^rd, because the Yanks sent Phelps down to stretch him out so that he could be a starter.  So why are they screwing him around?  OK, after being upset seeing this I said, well at least they will just leave him in until the game is over; I still think it is silly because they are not doing what they should with a young arm, but I can’t get so aggravated even if I think it is stupid.  Phelps threw the ball great and then Girardi took him out after a stellar 1 2/3 innings.  Now he matched up Rapada well, but that is not the point, now you are looking for the guy who is not sharp when you know the guy pitching is and the game is tied with nobody on…let me repeat…and the game is tied and nobody is on.  Rapada does the job and then hands it over to Eppley who ends up losing the game (with the help of an error by Jeter, I don’t care how they scored it…also Nix played poor defense earlier that cost us a run on a DP as he failed to get the ball to Cano quickly and he also misplayed an earlier play as well.)

Girardi made the mistake of trying to find the one guy who wasn’t pitching well and he did it in a tie game and he did it when the guy he went to originally should have been able to go until the game was over.  So he screwed up the game and also did not help the maturation, or at least the lengthening out of Phelps.  Girardi did not have a plan!

The standings on the right show Baltimore getting it done of late; luckily the other teams have not played well - Boston in last.  Even more reason to make sure you take care of Phelps Girardi!!!