Game 70 Recap

[WE data via FanGraphs]

You know it's bad when the Yankees have such a slim chance of winning, so early in the game that I have to chop down the font for their name in the chart to 14 point just to fit it in.

It was already late and I was already tired, so when A.J. Burnett gave up three home runs in the first fucking inning after he retired the first two batters he faced and sank the Yanks into a 5-0 hole, I took the out I was given and just went to bed. I'm glad I did, because aside from Nick Swisher's triple in the third and a few more garbage time runs, the Yankees hardly got to Rodrigo "I give up a shitload of home runs and am not a very good pitcher" Lopez.

As I sarcastically implied in the chart above, let's hear it for A.J. Burnett folks! He gave up seven runs in four innings, all of which came with two outs. That was his fourth straight loss and he adds Lopez to the list of Brett Cecil, Jake Arietta (making his rookie debut) and Jamie Moyer (doing whatever the opposite of that would be) to the list of pitchers who have beaten him over the stretch of death.

The offense hasn't provided a whole lot of support for Burnett as he's been struggling, but over these last four games, he's 21 runs in 20 innings, so he's setting the bar pretty damn high for them. Add those three longballs he gave up last night to the tally and that's nine of them over this dismal span - very nearly one every other inning. Yes, the Diamondbacks hit a lot of home runs, especially at home, but Burnett hasn't seemed to be able to keep the ball in the park against anyone lately.

This location chart from Brooks Baseball pretty much sums the way he's been pitching over his past few outings. Lots of stuff way off the plate that no one aside from maybe Vlad Guerrero is ever going to offer at, lots of it right down the middle and not much around the edges of the zone. That's pretty much exactly what you don't want to do as a pitcher.

I'm not sure how you'd find this out, but I'm guessing last night was one of the lowest rated games of the year, if not the very lowest. It was a Monday night tilt that started at 10PM and the game was all but over by 10:30. It takes a dedicated fan (who didn't go to three Phish shows over the weekend) and/or someone who lives west of the Mississippi to hang in there until the bitter end last night.

Hey, at least tonight's game starts a half hour earlier - at 9:40 - and Burnett isn't pitching! Andy Pettitte will be taking on Dan Haren.

Youk Knows We Exist... I Think

[Read from the bottom up]

So last night, I was in the process of writing the recap and saw the bottom update pop up on my TweetDeck. One of the cool things about Twitter is that you are only one degree of separation away from people you would never otherwise talk to directly.

After seeing Youk's tweet, I figured I had to respond with something. How else could an asshole like myself interact with the guy I named this blog after hating? I would have nothing to say to anyone else on the Red Sox, but I've been curious to know what he would think of the name of the site and the fact it does exist.

Interestingly, he did respond, but it's tough to tell if he actually took any time to process what he wrote and who he said it to. The guy responds to everyone. Surely he would have known the Yankees lost almost immediately after finishing the game at Fenway, so the question mark after "you lost" doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he knew we were Yankees fans. But he's a baseball player, not a writer. That was the extent of the conversation because he bowed out shortly thereafter, so I'm not sure what to make of it.

Have we been acknowledged?