Game 72 LOLcap

[WE data via FanGraphs]

Right out of the gate, last night's game had the feeling of one that would turn into an utter shitshow. It was exceedingly clear that Dontrelle Willis wasn't able to throw strikes when he walked Derek Jeter on four pitches and then allowed him to advance to second on a wild pitch in the process of going 3-1 on Nick Swisher. Swish singled to bring home the run and but when Willis ran the count full against Mark Teixeira, he left first too early and was picked off without even really trying to steal.

Teixeira walked on the next pitch and Alex Rodriguez watched four more balls fly by, the last of which went behind his ankles. That put runners on first and second for Robinson Cano who Willis proceeded to throw three straight balls to.

Just to review, at this point, Dontrelle had thrown 23 pitches and 18 of them were taken out of the strike zone. Not many of them were especially close. Cano was content to watch two fastballs slip in for strikes but swung at missed at the 3-2 pitch that was probably out of the zone. That's excusable, but Mark Teixeira got caught stealing third base to end the inning, which totally wasn't. The Yankees let a guy who threw more than twice as many balls as strikes in an inning escape with only one run allowed because they handed him two outs on the bases.

After that blown chance, Javy Vazquez started off the second by going walk-single-walk-single but was saved from allowing a run when the D-Backs third base coach attempted to make a late hold and left Kelly Johnson stranded on the way to home. Vazquez, who only had a little more control than Willis, then walked Miguel Montero to load the bases and after running the count full, gave up a two out, two run single to Adam LaRoche to put Arizona ahead 2-1.

Unfortunately, the horrible play didn't end there. Here's just a sampling of some of the other garbage that went down.

• Despite the fact that Willis obviously couldn't throw strikes, Francisco Cervelli bunted to lead off the second. MAKE HIM THROW THE BALL OVER THE PLATE FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
  
  
• Willis' seventh walk came with the bases loaded with one out in the third inning. However, the Yankees only scored one run that frame because Willis' replacement, Blaine Boyer, got Robinson Cano (the first batter he faced) to hit into an inning-ending double play.
  
  
• That was one of five DPs for the Yankees.
  
  
• Even with all of those twin killings, there were a total of 19 men left on base - 11 for the Yanks and 8 for the D-Backs - and the Bombers were 3/14 with runners in scoring position.
  
  
• The Yankees worked 13 walks, two of which were by Javy Vazquez.
  
  
• Javy eventually found the strikezone, but was done after five innings having given up four runs and with no chance to win the game.
  
  
• With two men on and one out in the fifth, Robinson Cano ripped a line drive to left but it Gerardo Parra made an incredible diving snag and got up in time to throw A-Rod out at first, ending the inning. Two of them weren't entirely his fault, but he was a part of three different inning-ending DPs.
  
  
• Damaso Marte was called for a balk in the sixth and then uncorked a wild pitch that put the go-ahead run on third with one out, and allowed him to score in the next at bat.

Despite the Snakes' best efforts to give it away, the Yanks were behind in this one until the ninth inning when Aaron Heilman began the frame with two walks. Teix moved the runners over with a grounder and A-Rod lofted the game-tying sac fly. With the opposing bullpen depleted and the game within striking distance, Joe Girardi went to Mariano Rivera, who worked a scoreless bottom half of the ninth.

Curtis Granderson led off the top of the 10th with a homer to right, so when Rivera's spot came up four batter's later, he made the plate appearance so that he could come back for his first two inning save this year.

Mo grounded out to first in his AB and immediately got into trouble in the bottom of the 10th. Clinging to a one run lead, he gave up a looping single to Stephen Drew and double down the left field line to Justin Upton. He then intentionally walked Montero to put a force at every base and the D-Backs looked to be in position to steal this one back. However, Rivera got Chris Young to pop out to the catcher, jammed Adam LaRoche in on his hands so that he skied it to third and struck out Mark Reynolds swinging to end the game.

After the game Mo really hit the nail on the head, saying:

We pulled this game [out] but we played horrible. It's unacceptable, the way that we played. We can't be playing games like that, you know? We are better than that, we are supposed to do what's right in baseball.

Oddly, it was a bit like the US Soccer Team's game in the World Cup. They blew an ungodly amount of opportunities but came back just in the nick of time and escaped by the skin of their teeth.

It was four hours and seven minutes long and uglier than Don Mossi, but at least the Yankees won. And not only did they win, but for the second night in a row, everyone else in the division lost, so they lead the Rays and Sawx by 2.5 games each.

Today is an off day before the team heads out to L.A. to meet up with old friends Joe Torre, Don Mattingly, Larry Bowa, Manny Ramirez and the rest of the Dodgers. Stay tuned for some posts about the history between the two teams today and tomorrow.

Will Cowboy Joe Be Put Out To Pasture?

The old cliche says that you never notice the umps until they screw something up. And for the most part, I think that's right. The men in blue take a lot of flack when they get something wrong, and it seems to me that the level of anger directed at them has been growing recently. But generally speaking, I think they do a good job. If we need a super slow-mo instant replay from three different angles before we can tell, I think we can cut them a little slack on the close ones.

What isn't quite so easy to stomach is when an umpire chooses to make himself less inconspicuous. Certain umps like to get a little too emphatic with their punch outs. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Tim McClelland is notoriously slow and nonchalant when behind the plate. Tuesday night saw Balking Bob Davidson nearly lose his mind in tossing Carl Crawford and Joe Maddon after an indefensibly bad strike call.

And of course, Cowboy Joe West has been having a quite a 2010 for himself. While West is usually the one with the poor strike zone while Davidson calls the balks, the two apparently chose to reverse roles this week. By now you've certainly heard of West's two balk calls on Mark Buehrle yesterday, leading to West tossing Ozzie Guillen and then Buehrle. As Rob Iracane at Walkoff Walk rightly points out, the two balk calls may have been borderline, but West within his rights to call them. And while I can understand Buehrle's frustration after getting hung up twice on something many other pitchers get away with, he didn't help his case by drawing a line in the dirt after the first and dropping his glove in frustration after the second. You can debate whether or not his ejection was deserved, but it certainly shouldn't be surprising.

What's most disturbing though is that circumstantial evidence is mounting that West's repeated appearances in the news may not be accidental. On the heels of yesterday's debacle in Cleveland, word leaked that West will be working this weekend's series between Boston and Kansas City. It will be West's first series with Boston since his early season comments about their pace of play. Normally umpiring crews are not publicized by MLB in advance of a series, and this one is no different. How then did this information become public? Through Joe West's publicist of course.

This is the real problem here. Regardless of how poorly regarded West is as an umpire, regardless of his confrontational history as an umpire, I'm willing to cut him some slack as an arbiter of the game. I can understand why West, with a side career as country singer, might retain a publicist to support that endeavor. But there's absolutely no way that any umpire or any official within Major League Baseball should be publicizing his upcoming series. His job as an umpire is to be invisible, not to intentionally draw attention to himself.

Buehlre may face a fine for his actions yesterday. Ozzie Guillen will certainly be fined and possibly even suspended for his actions and for his hilarious, and likely truthful, postgame rant. And that's fine. I don't begrudge those two the actions they took but they took those actions knowing full there are consequences for them. Now they'll be held accountable, but accountability is a two way street.

I understand that MLB cannot publicly admonish, fine, or suspend Joe West. But at this point, with his comments on the pace of play, with his look-at-me actions during yesterday's game, and with his inexcusable press release, Major League Baseball has to do something about Joe West.

West is in his 32nd year as a Major League umpire. He'll be 59 by year's end and isn't exactly the fittest fella on the field. This past off-season, MLB had no qualms with quietly showing the door to longtime umps Randy Marsh, Ed Montague, Rick Reed, and Charlie Relaford, as well as even longer-tenured supervisors Marty Springstead, Rich Garcia, and Jim McKean. After his antics through the first two months of 2010, MLB would be very wise to do the same with Joe West after this season.

Quick But Not Painless

[Photos]

After Sunday afternoon's game, Matt chose to eat a little crow for what he wrote in the preview, and tonight it's my turn. I spent my post making fun of Brett Tomko for whining about he lack of opportunities with the Yankees this season and for tonight at least, he had the last laugh.

Tomko threw just 78 pitches in his start because he wasn't fully stretched out, but used them efficiently and pitched to contact over his 5 innings of work. He struck out one and walked one, getting the other 13 outs with the help of his defense; five on the ground and nine in the air.

The most influential play, by more than 10% in WPA, came in the third inning when Tomko faced his only real jam of the game. Ramiro Pena and Derek Jeter led of the inning with back to back singles, Johnny Damon flew out to right and Mark Teixeira loaded the bases with a walk. With only one out, A-Rod came to the plate in an extremely favorable RBI situation but instead grounded into an inning-end 1-2-3 double play. A-Rod let Tomko off the hook and the Yankees never got another man to third base.

A.J. Burnett took a complete game loss, his first CG of the year and the Yankees' second after CC Sabathia's outing in Detroit back in April. All of the damage the A's did came in the bottom of the fourth inning. Rajai Davis doubled, stole third and was singled home by Kurt Suzuki to break the scoreless tie. Jerry Hairston, Jr.'s brother Scott followed that with another single and those two were moved over by a groundout courtesy of Mike Sweeney. With two outs, Burnett started his delivery home but stopped in the middle of his delivery and held onto the ball. The runners advanced and Mark Ellis doubled into the gap to make it 3-0 A's.

Aside from the 4th inning, Burnett was one of he lone bright spots in a frustrating game for the Yanks. Over his 8 innings, he gave up six hits and two walks while striking out 5. It only took him 99 pitches and combined with the Yanks absence at the plate allowed the game to wrap up in a tidy 2:15. Jeter went 3-4 and Posada picked up a hit on his birthday.

There isn't a whole lot more to say about this one. A solid pitching performance was wasted by a non-existent offense one. The Yanks have been rolling along so well that it's easy to forget that a lot of the time, things don't go according to plan. The Yanks were supposed to beat up on Brett Tomko, but instead he made people momentarily forget that he's 36 years old and has had one year since 1997 in which he was above league average. Congrats, buddy. Go paint a fucking picture about it.