Game 2: We Gotta Live Together

Coming off a tough loss in Fenway on Sunday night, the Yankees face an even tougher pitching match up against the Red Sox this evening. The true ace of the Sox staff, 26 year old left hander Jon Lester gets the call this evening while the Yanks counter with A.J. Burnett.

Lester is coming off of two straight seasons with 200+ innings and sub-3.50 ERAs. Although he started one fewer game in 2009 then in '08, Lester recorded 73 more strikeouts, jumping his K/9 from 6.5 to 10.0. Predictably, his FIP dropped almost an entire run from 4.08 to 3.13 as a result. There are a host of other factors of course, but the increased velocity he saw across the board probably helped generate more swings and misses.

During that same span, Lester continued to allow under one hit per inning and walk just under 3 per 9. Despite the dramatic increase in strikeouts, Lester's ERA actually increased a tick from 3.21 to 3.41 based mostly on an increase in his home run rate from an incredible 0.6 to a simply solid 0.9. As a lefty in Fenway, has done an admirable job of keeping the ball in the park, allowing significantly fewer long balls at home than on the road.

In order to combat the southpaw on the mound, Joe Girardi has elected to go with Marcus Thames over Brett Gardner.

Why this makes sense: The Green Monster makes it more likely that Thames' will do more damage on offense and less on defense. The small left field at Fenway means less ground for him to cover in the bottom halves of the innings and large, looming target for doubles and home runs in the tops.

Why it doesn't make sense: If anyone should be sitting against lefties (based on previous track records - which is clearly why Thames is getting the start), it should be Curtis Granderson. Gardner hasn't even had a chance to make a start against a lefty this year and Girardi is already sitting him. There is strong an argument to be made for playing both Granderson and Gardner because each can exploit the soft-throwing Victor Martinez if they get on base.

Perhaps Girardi will give Gardner some chances against lesser lefties or in parks with bigger outfields, but Thames gets his shot tonight.

While it might be advantageous to Thames, Fenway was not kind to Burnett last year as he gave up 22 runs in 12 2/3 innings over three starts. The last one of those was a 5 inning, 9 run shellacking on August 22nd that saw Burnett and Posada clash over pitch selection. Burnett was apparently intent on throwing his curveball while Posada thought the Sox hitters were waiting on it. Whether or not there was real animosity between them, Burnett made six more regular season starts and 5 in the postseason, none of which were caught by Posada.

This season, however, appears to be a different story. Burnett has been working with Posada all throughout Spring Training in an effort to get on the same page. Posada apparently endeared himself to Burnett by staying late to catch a simulated game after A.J.'s scheduled start against the Braves got rained out and together, they've been attempting to refine his changeup.

Burnett and Posada aren't the best match. Burnett's tendency to bury curveballs in the dirt doesn't mix well with Posada's 38 year old body. Apparently they have different ideas about what to throw to which hitters in certain counts. But now they Jose Molina is gone to Toronto, they've gotta do their best to figure it out how they can make their battery combination a successful one.

-Lineups-

Yankees:

Jeter SS

Johnson DH
Teixeira 1B
Rodriguez 3B
Cano 2B
Posada C
Swisher RF
Thames LF
Granderson CF

Red Sox:

Ellsbury LF
Pedroia 2B
Martinez C
Youkilis 1B
Ortiz DH
Beltre 3B
Drew RF
Cameron CF
Scutaro 2B

Did You Know?

Before tonight, had you considered the possibility that if you bring the tying run to the plate and that batter grounds into a double play, even if a run scores, during the next at-bat, the tying run would no longer be at the plate? When was the last time you saw a pitcher throw an 8 inning complete game?

Thanks to Jorge Posada and CC Sabathia, now you know both of those things.

Not to point to point the finger(s) at those two, of course. The home run Sabathia gave up to Magglio Ordonez literally bounced off the top of the wall. Maggs sliced it off his back foot down the right field line, and left the park by the slimmest of margins. The rest of the offense wasn't too helpful either. Robby Cano and Ramiro Pena were the only ones who could muster than one hit (two apiece) as Verlander racked up nine strikeouts.

It was a swift and brutal affair, a tragic tilt that ended far too soon. After three excruciating Red losses to the Sox in a row, you might have thought the Yanks were due for a bounceback. You would have been wrong. They were were efficiently disposed of in a tidy 2:19.

While the Red Sox series averaged just over four hours per game, this one went quietly into the night. A letdown game after a clash with their arch rivals, perhaps? I'd like to think a team struggling to stay above .500 wouldn't need any extra motivation to win a game coming off being swept by a division foe.

Who knows how much effort actually correlates to success in baseball? I'd venture to guess the connection is not very strong. It's not like football, where strength has a much greater impact upon success. You can hit the gym and the results will translate much more directly to your success on the field.

At a certain point in baseball, no matter what you do (aside from taking steriods), you are pretty much as good as you are going to get. The greatest player of all-time reached base in less than half of the times he came to the plate. Both pitching and hitting have a fickleness and mystique about them. You don't want to give a sinkerballer too much rest and you wouldn't want to disturb a batter's choreographed routine.

I think it has a lot to do with the extremely random nature of baseball. Baseball completely rewrites the concept of confidence intervals. I've never seen a trend player's numbers that made me 95% confident in anything. You are trying to hit a round ball with a rounded bat. Every fraction of an inch affects the outcome. No matter how great of a slugger or hurler you are, you can never hope to control your results that precisely. And that is the reason they need to play 162 games. You just have to stack the odds in your favor, throw it against the wall, and see what sticks.

When things go wrong, who is there to be mad at? The Baseball Gods? The laws of probability? Fate? That's part of the appeal for me as a fan. You don't have to ride the rollercoaster of every up and down. The season lasts forever. It's not like football, where games are ten times more significant in the standings and occur a week apart. If the Yankees were the Giants, the season would have been over already.

It's early in the schedule, and no matter what some anonymous commenters would like you to believe, there is still a lot of baseball to be played and a lot could change over that time. Maybe when September rolls around we'll look back at this time and realize that all the rough patches were actually bad omens. Or perhaps, we'll look back at this stretch and wonder why we were so impatient so as to assume that we could tell the future by the results of 19 games.