Game 85 Recap

[Data via FG]

Highlights:

• In the wake of his victory in the Final Vote and resulting selection to the All-Star team, Nick Swisher had another big night, going 4-4 (two doubles) and a walk in addition to making a nice sliding catch in the 5th. One of those two-baggers set the table for A-Rod's game-winning hit in the ninth as it put runners on second and third with one out.
  
  
• Andy Pettitte was brilliant yet again, striking out nine in eight innings and allowing just one run. His only real rough patch came in the 6th. He gave up two straight singles to begin the frame and Ichiro dropped a bunt right in front of the plate. Pettitte fielded it cleanly but sailed the throw wide of first, allowing a run to score and the runners to move to second and third.
  
  There was still no one out at this point and it looked likely that the game would be blown wide open. However, Pettitte retired Chone Figgins, intentionally walked Franklin Gutierrez and then proceeded to strike out Russell Braynan and Jose Lopez to wriggle out of the jam with minimal damage.
  
  
• The Yanks put runners on first and second with no one out in the 8th on a walk by A-Rod and a single by Robby Cano. Jason Vargas uncorked a wild pitch and A-Rod moved to third, but Cano didn't take the opportunity to advance to second, possibly influenced by the batter, Jorge Posada initially gesturing for the runners to stay put. As it turns out, Posada grounded into a double play, which scored the run but shut down a further rally. It was a big mistake at the time, regardless of whose fault it was, but thankfully the Yanks got away with it when they got to Mariners' closer David Aardsma for the second time in just over a week.

Not In The Highlights:

• In the first inning, Ichrio was attempting to catch a pop up off the bat of Mark Texieira and bumped into a "fan", who was brushing her hair and proceeded to absolutely freak out and immediately text everyone she knows, "OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG ICHIRO LIKE TOUCHED ME!!!11!1!!!////".
  
  
• Seattle fans, apparently still bitter over him leaving the team ten fucking years ago, threw fake money at Alex Rodriguez when he game to bat in the 8th inning.
  
  
• The Yankees put at least one man on base in every inning last night, but didn't score until the 8th. Particularly frustrating were 1st (1st & 2nd, no outs) and 4th (1st & 2nd, one out). They were 1-11 with runners in scoring position and left 12 men on base.
  
  
• Brett Gardner was 0-4 with three strikeouts, but he did gun down Ichiro at third base in the first inning.
  
  
• Mark Teixeira had a pretty terrible night, hurting the Yanks chances of winning by 38%. he grounded into a double play in the first, and failed to get the runner in from third in the ninth when he popped out to the catcher. Luckily A-Rod was there to pick him up with a huge two out hit.

Up Next:

• Yet another late start as Phil Hughes takes on Cliff Lee.

Friday Afternoon Link Party

How convenient, I only sleep with supermodels...

The Steinbrenners aren't the only ones with Yankee affiliations involved with thoroughbred horse racing. Joe Torre owns a horse called Homeboykris (I'm guessing he didn't name it) that has a good chance of running in the Kentucky Derby.

Over at the NYT bats blog, Sean Forman took a look at marathon games that used lots of pitchers (the Mets/Cardinals epic had 19, the second most since 1952).

Tonight, NYY Stadium Insider and Bronx Goblin are putting together a outing at Finnerty's on 2nd Ave between 13th ad 14th for the Yankees game. They've got some excellent specials so if you are in the city tonight and don't have plans, check it out.

Although the series with the A's is over, it's still worth checking out this piece by Jack Curry about Billy Beane and the expectations in Oakland.

Via BBTF, a 12 year old girl from Plant City, Florida threw back to back perfect games in Little League (yes, against the boys). Chelsea Baker primarily relies on her fastball now, but also learned a knuckleball from fellow Plant City resident Joe Niekro before he passed away in 2006. The knuckler could be her ticket to making it to the higher levels of the game, a la Eri Yoshida.

Carson Cistulli previews a host of games scheduled for this weekend at FanGraphs.

In honor of Earth Day yesterday, Steve Slowinski from DRays Bay collected a few ways that you can enjoy baseball more sustainably. My personal suggestion: don't start drinking hard liquor until the third inning.

Remember when the umpires weren't granting hitters time in the Yanks vs. Red Sox series earlier this year? Well they did it to the Rays too and Joe Maddon isn't happy.

Max Marchi ran down platoon splits by pitch type over at the Hardball Times.

The musically-named AAA affiliate of the Brewers - the Nashville Sound - is having Roy Orbison Night tonight. "The first 1.000 fans through the turnstiles will receive free Roy sunglasses and a case of unrequited heartache". (h/t Iracane on GReader)

Another explanation of Bill James disease, this time from the excellent Rogue's Baseball Index.

Late Monday night, Meech from The Fightins put out a call for help, asking if anyone had DVR'd the Phillies game on ESPN. The reason? There was some accidental nudity on the broadcast (obviously NSFW because of the bewbs).

Speaking of the Phils, Roy Halladay is off to an almost identical start to the one that Cliff Lee had for them last year, Bill Baer of Crashburn Alley takes a closer look at Doc.

Dave Allen at FanGraphs looks at how Ben Sheets shifts on the rubber and throws his pitches to right handed and left handed batters from distinctly different spots. There was a Yankee reliever who used this approach in the past couple years but I can't recall who it is now.

Over at the Hardball Times, Pat Andriola did a good job of rounding up some opinions on Bryce Harper's supposed character issues. Dave Cameron, Tom Tango, Rob Neyer and Keith Law all weigh in on Kevin Goldstein's initial take.

This is non-baseball, but the Giants selected pass rushing defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul with the 15th pick of the NFL Draft last night and are apparently not going to be trading Osi Umenyiora. Is Jerry Reese saying this to salvage some trade value for Osi? Is this like the Yankees stocking their farm system with catching prospects or Matt Millen habitually picked wide receivers for the Lions. Obviously somewhere in between, but the Giants now have 5 good defensive ends. It doesn't take a geometer to figure out that's probably a bit excessive.

Hang in there. Only a couple hours left.

Yanks Desecrate Angels

It's tempting to say that CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez won last night's game on their own. Sure there were many guys who made contributions to the win, but A-Rod drove in more runs than CC allowed in 8 innings and although the game was much closer than the final score indicates, the Angels never led in this game and were never particularly close. The ALCS MVP award race is certainly heating up.

Sabathia had an absolutely beastly pitching performance. He was efficient, needing only 101 pitches to plow through 8 innings and only one of them - a homer to Kendry Morales - would he have wanted back. The big man pitched to weak contact all night, striking out 5 Angels and the Morales home run was the only hit for extra bases. He did it all three days rest in a game that Yankees didn't want to lean to heavily on their bullpen - a huge and timely contribution.

A-Rod smacked a single and stole a base in the 4th inning, scoring from third on a close, hard collision at the plate after an infield bouncer by Robinson Cano. Mike Napoli's foot knocked him pretty squarely in the chest but he slid in under the tag and popped right up, scoring the Yankees first run. Alex then cranked a two run homer in his next at bat in the 5th, putting the Yanks up 5-0. Adding on to an already massive night, he doubled in the 9th inning, tagged up and took off for third, putting the pressure on Bobby Abreu. The throw was close to being there on time, but it bounced away from Chone Figgins into the stands, allowing A-Rod to score. For those scoring at home, A-Rod either drove in or scored 4 of the Yankees' runs and played a big role in the ones he scored. He forced the action all night and took over the game offensively, as much as you could expect one player in a 9 man line up to.

Both were one-man wrecking crews who, along with Melky Cabrera in particular, combined to smash the Angels apart in a 10-1 victory. Melky broke out of a postseason slide with a move out of Derek Jeter's playbook, a well-placed push bunt single towards first base. It worked like a charm, busting the slump with a real hit his next time up. He came to the plate with the bases loaded in the 4th inning and knocked in two big runs with a broken bat single. Melky later drew a walk against Ervin Santana before being driven home on a Johnny Damon homer and knocked in two more runs with a double in the 9th inning.

Melky silenced his doubters, namely the one moron who said he should never put on a Yankee uniform again and the other one who told him to go to hell, in a big way last night just like CC and A-Rod continued to do.

There's a sort of beautiful symmetry that the two guys on the Yankees who were perceived as the biggest choke artists coming into this postseason have not only made people think twice about their individual mettle but also the concept of clutch in general. Hey, maybe it's not indicative of a flaw in someone's mental make up if they have some bad postseason performances, you know? Guys can play well or not during October for extended stretches and it's not an indication of some asset or defect in their make up.

Aside from A-Rod and CC, people are sure to talk about the curious calls that once again plagued this game. Third base umpire Tim McClelland was the one at the center of the controversy this time. (Conspicuously) soon after Nick Swisher should have been picked off second base, McClelland said that he left third too early on a sacrifice fly by Johnny Damon. When the Angels checked, Swish was out, completing an inning-ending double play. The replay showed that Swish didn't leave early, but it was of the split screen variety so it was at the whim of whoever put it together to line the two clips up perfectly.

More egregiously, McClelland missed a double play that the Angels should have had in the fifth inning. Jorge Posada was caught in a run down between third and home while Cano was advancing from second. Both were off the bag when Mike Napoli tagged them, but only Posada was called out. If Cano was being forced to the base (which he wasn't) it would have been the right call. If Cano had put his foot on the bag, it would have been the right call.

Alas, it was not, and McClelland as the crew cheif addressed the media after the game to explain his mistakes. He admitted he was wrong on the Posada-Cano call but understandably didn't trust the replay on Swisher's tag-up. Neither of the errors led to any Yankee runs.

Predictably, the grounded rationalists over at Halos Heaven are taking this well. Just kidding, they've uncovered a vast conspiracy between FOX, the MLB and the umpires to get the Yankees into the World Series because they draw bigger ratings.

Speaking of the MLB and FOX being in cahoots, we've got a non-travel off day to sit through because the league has to milk the TV ratings for as much as they are worth and can't have too many weekday games starting at 4:00. As such, we'll have to wait until Thursday to find out when the next game at Yankee Stadium will be played.

"That's Dustin Pedroia Hitting!"

By now you have probably heard about the comments Jim Rice made about Zack Greinke sometime yesterday (which have since been pulled down). I believe the Chirs Littman from The Sporting Blog may have been the first on the case, Baseball Think Factory picked up Littman's post, Joe Posnanski threatened to write 20,000 words on the comments (and inadvertently crashed the site), Bob Harkins from Circling the Bases took Rice to task, I linked to them in our off night post, and Posnanski did write something about it, just not the aforementioned 20,000 word retort.

What is boils down to was that Rice said Greinke had "sporadic command", "didn't impress" him and "didn't seem dominant." Since Greinke is having an all-time great season in terms of ERA+, he had been drawing statistical comparisons to all-time great pitchers. Rice was having none of this, saying, instead of a prime Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, or Johan Santana, Greinke reminded him of a "righthanded Roger Moret".

You all remember ol' Rog', don't ya? He was the lanky left hander who spent parts of six seasons with the Red Sox starting in 1970. You know, the swing man with a career K/BB ratio of 1.20, who pitched over 100 innings in a season a whopping three times in his career and was out of baseball at age 28.

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to point out how stupid it is to judge a pitcher's dominance based on one start because JoePos already did that better than I possibly could. Once in a while Joba Chamberlain conjures up images of a young Roger Clemens and but other times you see Sidney Ponson. That's the nature of starting pitching. A 3.00 ERA equates to 2 runs over six innings. The trick is being effective over the long run.

The real reason I wrote this post is because even though I had already read what Rice wrote, I went back and clicked on the "Ask 14" website that the post originally came from. It was back up this morning and, just in time for the final regular season installment of the Red Sox and Yankees, I struck gold two posts down.

Okay, let's go over the assumptions you're asked to make while watching this commercial:

1. Dustin Pedroia works for a 6 year old girl. At a minor league baseball stadium.
   
   
2. Pedroia is totally cool with this arrangement.
   
   
3. On this particular day, she orders him to jump on a trampoline which appears to be situated down the first baseline of the field.
   

Now, for the action sequence!

• If you watch closely, Pedroia appears to materialize magically on the trampoline, an effect which, amazingly, someone had to specifically request and another person had to actually do, but serves absolutely no purpose in the context of the commercial other than to make it even less realistic.
  
  
• At first, no one is watching Dusty jumping around on said trampoline, but then right in the middle of one of his front flips (which almost certainly violate the terms of his contract) other people suddenly materialize, including other children and several adults.
  
  
• After the flips, someone in the crowd tosses him a glove and cheer wildly as he... wait for it... CATCHES THE BALL WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY JUMPING ON A TRAMPOLINE. IMPOSSIBLE!
  
  
• And for his final trick/task for his six year old boss, lil' Dusty shows off his hitting prowess by making contact with a ball on a trampoline, which we are then lead to believe has left the park for a home run, and how conveniently, directly over a Sullivan Tire sign.

Sullivan Ti-ah Guy: That's Hall of Fame hitting!

Jim Rice: That's Dustin Pedroia hitting!

Sullivan Ti-ah Guy: When you-ah great at what you do, you can perfo-ahm well und-ah any cirah-cumstances! Thaht's what we've been doing fwah ovah fifty yeahs at Sullivan Ti-ah!

The funny part about this is how obviously contrived the connection they are trying to make is:

Dustin Pedroia is on a trampoline > Hitting baseballs on a trampoline takes a lot of skill > Getting into the Hall of Fame also takes a lot of skill > Jim Rice is in the Hall of Fame > Sullivan Tires can perform (sell tires?) "und-ah any cirah-cumstances!"

What are these circumstances? If there is a robbery taking place in the store, can you still mount and balance my new Michelins? If the location is flooded, will they still fix my flat?

Wow. Even if you leave all the other ridiculous shit the way it is, the Sullivan guy could just tell you that they sell tires that perform under any circumstances (snow tires, all-weather, racing, etc.) not they Sullivan Tire itself performs "under any circumstances" which doesn't make any sense at all.

I think people are so used to commercials, they usually just accept them at face value. They come at you during a barrage of other shitty marketing communications, most of which you either don't even acknowledge or simply dismiss offhand. But realize that every detail that goes into a 30 second TV spot has to be thought out and probably discussed with multiple other people. Which makes the above all the more laughable. If Sullivan Tire hired an outside agency to do this spot, they should really try to get some of their money back. If they did it themselves, they should probably think about hiring an outside agency.

And no discussion of terrible local advertising featuring a Red Sox player would be complete without this masterpiece from Route 125 Auto. I could write another 500 word break down of this marketing abomination but I think I'll pass.

Like, No, SRSLY!1!!!

WTF?

Sorry A-Rod, They Can't All Be Hotties

In and of it itself, the 58 minute rain delay was quite annoying, but this totally made up for it.




What did we learn guys?

Professional Athletes + High School Girls = Aaaaaaawwwwkwarrrrd