9-5 and 9-6 game

Thursday night.  

It was a great comeback and heartbreaking to see Mo blow the save with 2 outs and 2 strikes on the batter, but a few things went wrong.  1) After the single, Boston pinch runs with their blazing guy.  We do nothing but throw our pitch???  No throw over, no pitch out, we just let him run and while I think Romine gives us the best chance to win IMO, he does not throw as well as Stewart (who made an outstanding throw the other day that Cano whiffed on).   Romine threw the ball into the dirt and Jeter couldn’t handle it and the runner went to 3^rd.  Then Rivera allowed the tying single.  It really let the win out of our sails, but the game was still tied. 

We still had a chance in the bottom of the 9^th as Soriano walked, but got picked off however he beat the throw to 2^nd when the first baseman dropped the ball.  After that break Soriano got picked off trying to steal 3^rd to erase himself.  At the time, Michael Kay said that it was inexcusable to get picked off there because he was already in scoring position.  He was not fully correct as stealing 3^rd with one out is a good idea if you can catch the other team napping.  However, we were running all game (very aggressively) and after just getting picked off of first, they were not sleeping at this point, in fact they were more aware than normal.  THIS is why it was the wrong time to go. 

In the 10^th we had a chance to throw the runner out at home, but Ichiro did his extra hop and then didn’t reach home.  It was not a good throw, especially after taking an extra hop to get it home.  Even after the hop if he made the throw home he would have been out, but he didn’t.  That throw should have been made and it cost us.  He didn’t take as long as he does sometimes, but he still took the extra hop which made it a tough play for Romine who might have been able to come up and catch it on the fly and then dive to the play or taken the chance on the in between hop and stayed back…it was tough play on a catcher.   

Friday Night

8-3 lead going to the top of the 6^th on some good hitting.  However, I am so tired of us making outs on the base paths.  Wells easily scored on a single to RF as the OF’r backed up to field the ball and Nunez who was on first gets easily thrown out at 3^rd (to the point Nunez stopped and said I give up) when the ball was cut off.  We do this all the time (I know e have done this at least 10 times this year) and it is not necessary.  Believe me; if the other team thinks they can throw the guy out at home, they won’t cut the ball off.  You think, it is ok because we are up (I think it was 6-3 at the time), but instead of 2 guys on and 2 outs the inning is over.  You can’t give up opportunities like that

Moving to the possible season ending 7th/8^th inning where we allowed 9 runs (lucky Tampa has been awful).  I am not a fan of Hughes (as you all know) but he was a little unlucky (even though he had nothing on his pitches).  The first batter hit a mildly hard line drive to Nunez that he allowed the ball to eat him up.  If he charges that, he gets it on a nice short hop fro an easy play.  Nunez simply is bad at SS and while he has improved, he has improved to bad…from atrocious.  The Hughes allowed a single up the middle.  With one out and carp coming in as a pinch hitter here is where Girardi screwed up the game.  I have no idea why he would let Hughes stay in the game here?  The guy who has been bad all year or the lefty (Logan) who has been pretty good all year?  Joe leaves Hughes in and Hughes who has no put away pitch walks the lefty Carp.  That being said, Hughes should have struck out Carp as he got a strike call earlier in the AB against Carp that was farther outside than the one he called for a ball.  Hughes did catch a break on that call, but the ump can’t keep going back and forth on calls.  Of course, Joe West was also the same guy who blew the Joba check swing call the previous night that was a huge killer for us.  Either way, this was a terrible decision by Joe to leave Hughes in there against the lefty.  Hughes than allowed an infield hit to Pedroia that should have been an out…Arod threw low to Reynolds and Reynolds, who has played very well couldn’t scoop a fairly easy scoop…even if it was ARod’s low throw to be blamed.  Now with bases loaded and 1 out Logan is summoned against big Papi.  In a great AB, Logan froze Ortiz on a curve ball on 3-2.  Now Napoli was up.  On 3-2 Napoli hit a fly ball to RF that Ichiro cruised after instead of running to the fence and tried to time his leap for a ball that was over the fence and Ichiro never really reached the fence.  He really misplayed this.  Interestingly, Girardi put Ichiro in for his defense over Wells (honestly not such a big difference there and I was surprised when I saw it) and perhaps the 2 inch taller Wells might have caught the ball?  Ironically, I heard many people say that the ball Granderson could not catch the other day would have been caught by Ichiro.  The grandy play was a lot harder than this one as the ball was hit much harder and required a lot of speed to get to the spot.    Either way, we made neither play and we are on life support.

The game was still tied after the grand slam, but the Yanks were done.  Claiborne didn’t pitch well and Joba continued that poor pitching to lose 12-8.

BTW, the Boston players all look horrendous with those beards…I actually am glad we can’t grow beards because that is embarrassing (even if they are a better team than us).