Friday
night was an odd game. We faced the slop
throwing righty or “crafty righty” Jeff Weaver.
Drew and Tex were able to sneak a few homers over the short porch to
give us a 4 run lead and we tacked on a few runs to get us to an 8-1 lead
entering the 9th. The one run
Anaheim scored was when Eovaldi, who was pitching very well, ran out of gas in
the 6th inning, uncharacteristically walking the bases loaded. Girardi correctly pulled him and Shreve did
another nice job allowing one run on a weak grounder and then after a 3-2 walk,
he struck out Aybar to end the threat.
After Shreve got through the 7th and Lindgren got through the
8th, Girardi correctly went to Rogers IMO, but incorrectly moved
Pirela to 2nd while giving Tex rest for the final inning…moving Drew
to 3rd and Headley to 1B. Now
in an 8-1 game it probably doesn’t matter, but one inning to get Pirela lose
and moving Headley to 1B seemed like a waste to me…and truth be told, it made
no difference defensively as Pirela had one play and he made it, but the inning
unraveled and it could have mattered.
Rogers was horrific. He allowed a
single, double, infield single, wild pitch, walk and a single before Girardi
went to Betances. I can’t blame Joe for
leaving in Rogers that long with such a lead.
Now the score was still only 8-3, but the tying run is on deck (making
this a save situation and a very easy one at that). Betances could not find the strike zone,
allowing a single, and 2 walks which made our lead 8-6 with bases loaded and
nobody out!
I
did not track all the pitches, but I did not like the pitch selection as I
thought we threw far too many breaking balls.
My take was he controlled the fastball better (not well, but better) and
the batters seeing him have less control would lay off any breaking ball and
only swing at the fastball. This appeared
to be the Angels strategy as well.
However, what makes pitch selection so interesting; is that the other
side of the coin is that if Betances could throw a breaking ball for a strike
he would get an easy “taken” strike. While the McCann Betances strategy hurt us to
get us to 8-6, it started to pay off as we struck out Niewenhuis on a 2-2
pitch. Then Betances fell behind 3-1
before getting a grounder to SS that Didi made a diving stop and got the force
out at 2nd (huge play/pitch on a 3-1 count in that spot considering
Betances had thrown a lot of pitches and control was shabby). Carlos Perez was sent up to pinch hit with
the score 8-7 (1st and 3rd). Betances threw a breaking ball for a strike,
then two breaking balls for balls, then another breaking ball for a swinging
strike before throwing his 5th breaking ball in a row to strike out
Perez swinging on Dellins' 33rd pitch…Whew!!!
1st
inning, Didi made an outstanding dive going up the middle showing range that
way we have not seen in a decade to get an out.
While Didi did boot his 8th error later, it was not horrible
as the runner went right in front of him and his footwork was off as he might
have been thinking of getting the runner at 3rd. It was not a good play, but I think Didi is
starting to play the game like most thought he would.
Drew
hit 2 homers in the game and as awful as he has been at the plate, had been
very solid in the field. Maybe this is
his turning point? Doubtful, but he did
raise his OPS 46 points to a still anemic .583. With Ellsbury out and Flores really giving
us another out at the plate (so far) we need someone to step up.
Gardner
was on 1st against Weaver who throws slow and allows a lot of SB’s
and it took Gardner 4 or 5 pitches to go and easily get the SB. He is blazing fast, but he clearly does not
have base stealing skill. The AB could
have been over waiting so many pitches.
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