| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | ||
| Baltimore | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 12 | 0 | |
| N.Y. Yankees | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 13 | 0 |
First of all, sorry for the lack of game thread tonight, I was pretty busy all day and couldn't make it to a computer in time to post the lineups. And now on to the very, very pathetic game...
I guess that 8 game winning streak was a fluke after all, at least that's how it looks right now. This team looks absolutely terrible, and with the Angels coming into town the day after tomorrow things could get a lot worse very quickly. Tonight they dropped their third straight overall, and the second straight to the last place Baltimore Orioles.
Darrell Rasner started and pitched well for six innings, but was left in the game one inning too long and it was a very costly inning. He didn't retire a man in the 7th, and eventually the O's scored four to put the game away. In six+ innings Rasner allowed four runs on eight hits and three walks, he also struck out one batter.
The bullpen wasn't much better tonight, Damaso Marte allowed two runs on three hits and walk in one inning of work. Jose Veras did pitch well, throwing a scoreless 8th. But Mariano Rivera was once again very human in a non-save situation, he allowed a big home run to Aubrey Huff, a run that proved to be the game winner. I know Mo has been great as a Yankees, and even better this year, but he cannot continue to have these bad performances in non-save situations if the Yankees expect to make the post season this year.
| IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA | |
| Rasner (L, 5-8) | 6.0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 4.92 |
| Marte | 1.0 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3.67 |
| Veras | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2.78 |
| Rivera | 1.0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.33 |
ORIOLES PITCHING
Daniel Cabrera is an awful pitcher, but somehow, someway, he consistently dominates the Yankees. His ERA against the Yankees this season he is 3-0, with a 3.15 ERA, but 4-6 record with 5.07 ERA against everyone else. Tonight he allowed just three runs on eight hits in seven innings of work, and would have lasted longer had home plate ump Chad Fairchild not overreacted and thrown him out of the game for hitting A-Rod with a pitch.
The Yankees had their chances, but once again came up short, especially in big spots. The Yankees had the tying runs on base in the 8th with nobody out but Wilson Betemit, Melky Cabrera and Xavier Nady each failed to get a hit. Alex Rodriguez also struck out as the tying run for the first out of the inning. Then, after Jason Giambi cut the lead to one with a 2-run single, Robinson Cano and Wilson Betemit both struck out with the tying run in scoring position to end the game.
Speaking of Wilson Betemit, why is this bum still on this team? He's terrible. He never deserves to start, or pinch hit, hell, he doesn't deserve a chance to even take batting practice on this team.
| AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | LOB | AVG | |
| Damon, LF | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .318 |
| Jeter, SS | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .286 |
| Abreu, RF | 5 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | .283 |
| Rodriguez, A, DH | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | .326 |
| Giambi, 1B | 5 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 5 | .255 |
| 1-Christian, PR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .250 |
| Cano, 2B | 5 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .266 |
| Betemit, 3B | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | .244 |
| Cabrera, CF | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .247 |
| Moeller, C | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .230 |
| a-Nady, PH | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .322 |
| Molina, C | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .229 |
| Totals | 39 | 6 | 13 | 6 | 3 | 7 | 21 | |
| a-Struck out for Moeller in the 8th. 1-Ran for Giambi in the 9th. | ||||||||
| BATTING 2B: Jeter (23, Cabrera, D), Abreu 2 (28, Cabrera, D, Sherrill). HR: Rodriguez, A (22, 6th inning off Cabrera, D, 0 on, 0 out). TB: Damon 2; Jeter 2; Abreu 5; Rodriguez, A 5; Giambi 3; Cano; Moeller. RBI: Rodriguez, A (63), Cano 2 (50), Abreu (68), Giambi 2 (61). Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Giambi 3; Abreu; Nady; Betemit. GIDP: Cano. Team LOB: 10. BASERUNNING SB: Christian (4, 2nd base off Sherrill/Hernandez, R), Jeter (6, 3rd base off Cabrera, D/Hernandez, R). | ||||||||
ORIOLES OFFENSE
PLAYER OF THE GAME: Aubrey Huff (4-for-5, 2B, HR, 4 RBI, 2 R)
HONORABLE MENTION: Daniel Cabrera (7 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 2 K)
GOATS OF THE GAME: Wilson Betemit for being the awful baseball player that he is, Damaso Marte for giving up several very costly runs, he is already making the trade look like a disaster, and Mariano Rivera for being very very human in non-save situations.
The Yankees look to salvage the final game in the series tomorrow afternoon at The Stadium. Joba Chamberlain starts for the Yankees, and he will face Dennis Sarfate. Game Time: 1:05 p.m. - TV: YES - Radio: WCBS 880
11 Comments:
things are just falling apart these last 3 days. We need another starter really bad. Its impossible to feel confident with Ponson and Rasner. I think its time to bring up Kennedy or Aceves. How long will Phil Hughes take?, its a good sign he threw 3 scoreless innings. I would hope he would be reay in about 3 weeks.
This weekend could be very very ugly. A split would be good for us. We have to win tomorrow, if we get swept I might give up on this team. We have a tough schedule in August, so games against last place teams have to be won. If we miss the playoffs by 3 or 4 games, these games, and all the games this year, against the O's will be a big reason why we're not in October. WIN!!
They're saying 2-3 weeks for Hughes, probably closer to 3.
Yes tomorrow is as close to a must win as you can get at this point of the season. You can't give up though, regardless of the outcome. I may be pessimistic sometimes but I can't give up completely. At least not until a team is mathematically out of it.
But you're right, these losses to the last place O's are disgraceful.
Joe Girardi is a Joe Torre clone when it comes to everything but how to manage a bullpen. That's the one thing Girardi has done well. Everything else it seems he's as clueless as our last manager, and that was what I was hoping he'd be better at. No clue who to play and when, no clue where to bat guys (why Cano hasn't moved up to protect A-Rod yet after weeks of Giambi struggling miserably I have no idea). I realize Giambi did get 3 hits tonight, but they turned out to be too little too late. If he had done anything in either of his first two at bats where he left 5 guys on base, maybe we stake a lead early on and win the game that way.
Nady should have played tonight. He got his first Yankee hit (and HR) the night before, and should have played in LF. Why he's sitting on the bench as .240 hitters Wilson Betemit and Mekly Cabrera make asses of themselves is beyond me.
Melky, if anyone, should have been the player to sit. Play Damon in CF. It's not his legs that were injured. Yes, we lose a bit with the arm and perhaps some range. So what. Melky can't hit a lick, and it's seriously hurting us. We need to stop worrying about our defense and put our best 9 offensive players on the field.
Betemit has no business being on the team, period. He gets a hit once in a blue moon and strikes out every other at bat.
Why the HELL did Sexson not pinch hit for Betemit? I realize Sexson isn't tearing the cover off the ball, but at least he's a good BA guy against lefties, and they're not going to pull Sherill. Betemit is an awful hitter period, and and awfuler hitter batting RH. Seriously, just release the guy now and get it over with. He's mediocre at best on defense, and strikes out more than Adam Dunn.
Why is Rasner still in the game after 6 decent innings? We have a good, deep bullpen that hasn't been overworked. Use it tonight in the close ballgame, don't wait until there's trouble.
You can say hindsight is 20/20, but the thing is I said all this stuff before it happened, not after.
And I realize you can't take blame away from the Yankees for laying down against Baltimore, but what the *(@#$& is it with some of these Orioles players against the Yankees? There's a lot of "average" pitching in the AL, why don't players like Millar, Ramon Hernandez, et al hit like that against OTHER teams for once? For crying out loud.
And don't get me started on Daniel "I blow ass against everyone in the world but when I play the Yankees I suddenly have the nastiest breaking ball and pinpoint control on ever other pitch" Cabrera. The guy will throw a pitch nearly to the backstop, and then the next pitch will be thrown with Greg-Maddux-in-his-prime-like control.
And, to top off the shit-cake, the icing is that we lined out or slammed the ball into ground outs like 10 times combined. More than a couple of times early in the game with RISP. Can't we get ONE early ball to find a hole and perhaps get the snowball rolling a bit?
And finally, I realize it's pointless to even bother with this comment in this day and age where players all know and love each other aside from the occasional rivalry (like Youkilis, etc), but I'm tired of the Yankees being behind by 5 and have our guys smiling and laughing with the other team's players. Giambi - I realize you're a fun loving guy and you like to stay loose and everything, but would it kill you not to make out with every player that reaches first base when we're trailing by like 7 runs?
Again, I realize that's the way the game is these days, and you can't create hatred where there is none, but sometimes these guys play the game so... casually that it's frustrating as hell for me to sit here wanting to smash my fist through the TV only to have one of our guys reach first and start schmoozing with Kevin Millar. Just a little bit of focus and intensity here, please?
I lied - there's one more thing after that last one more thing. Kevin Long. When does this guy start getting some blame for the coaching job he's doing when it comes to preaching proper situational hitting? It seems like 90% of the time our guys walk up to the plate looking to bomb a HR out of the park and that's it. They're chasing pitcher's pitches ahead in the count... Even if a pitch is a strike on 2-0 doesn't mean you HAVE to swing at it. Long may be a good "mechanics" coach but he does NOTHING for these guys when it comes to things like in-game adjustments to a pitcher's patterns and stuff like that. How often does a pitcher continue to get our hitters out in the exact same way for 7 innings? By the second time through the order I'm sitting here on my couch picking out every single thing the pitcher is doing, and yet the hitters go up there the 3rd time through as lost as they were the first time through the order. Somebody (Girardi, Long) is really missing the boat here when it comes to proper hitting approach at the plate, and it shows by how awful the team has been with RISP and situational hitting.
All that being said, it's actually amazing they've won this many games considering the injuries they've had. If we had Hughes and/or Wang in the rotation, a lot of games like today that ended up ugly may have been wins. There's just a confidence level with a good SP that isn't there when an inconsistant guy like Rasner or Ponson is on the mound. The hitters must be thinking "man, we have to score big or we're screwed" and that messes up the whole operation.
Anyway, I feel like we'll win tomorrow. Joba will keep us in the game and the offense will score.
And as far as the Angels go, I know they always kill us, but for some reason I have this feeling like this could finally be the year where we KNOW they're going to kill us, THEY know they're going to kill us, and then they don't. They've been hammering Boston (7 wins in a row vs. Boston), and it would be gorgeous if we turned the tables this year and busted their asses for once.
Man baseball is frustrating as hell. Anyone who thinks being a Yankee fan is easy has NO idea. Oh yes, we contend every year, spend money, blah blah blah. Yes, it's great to know that every year you can contend. But I promise that the level of frustration felt with such high expectation is far greater than the pain felt by, say, a Royals fan. At least they can go about their daily lives.
Sorry about the novel.
Oh yeah, I think Sarfate is starting tomorrow, not Burres.
Pinstripes thanks for the comment. I agree with pretty much everything you said. The only thing I must question you about is this:
"Everything else it seems he's as clueless as our last manager, and that was what I was hoping he'd be better at"
Our last manager won four rings, got to the world series six times, and made the post season every year for 12 seasons. I know he wasn't perfect, but he's one of the top four Yankees managers of all-time. McCarthy, Stengel, Huggins and Torre. The numbers speak for themselves.
And you can't say that it was just the players he had, the other guys weren't managing a bunch of stiff either.
Other than that I agree with everything.
Yes, you're right about Sarfate.
Torre was good at managing personalities, awful at managing the game itself.
I would also challenge that Torre never had to deal with the total decimation of our team due to injuries like they've dealt with this year... A-Rod, Jeter, Damon for periods of time, and Matsui, Wang, Posada, Bruney, Hughes, Kennedy for extended periods or the whole season. That's a hell of a lot of our starting players to go down. If you told me we'd lose Wang, Hughes, Kennedy, Posada, and Matsui for most, if not all, of the season, I'd say there was no way we'd make the playoffs, and as it stands, we're in pretty decent shape, despite some very questionable moves by Girardi.
Torre had amazing starting pitching rotations during the championship years, and players that were all-around good players as opposed to superstar type guys. Torre didn't do anything with the team (2002 onward) once they started buying everyone they could get there hands on, and was part of the biggest collapse in NY sports history.
I'm not a Joe Torre basher, don't get me wrong... he was the right manager for NY at the time, and I don't think simply anyone could have won 4 out of 5 like the Yankees did under his command, but it's hard not to notice how flawed he was with his "on the field" managing. I thought Girardi would be a pronounced difference when it came to the attitude and approach this team would take, and really, it's hard to notice much of a difference in any facet of the way this team plays.
I think they need to call up Kennedy and give Geiese a start or two. The Ponson experiment incarnation #2 should just about be over with, and Rasner still just seems too shaky to me. At this point, our #4 and #5 can't do much worse.
The team looks a lot worse than they've been partially because Moose finally had an ugly outing. If not for that, we probably wouldn't be so disgusted.
Hopefully we beat up on Scarface today.
typos:
-"there" should have been "their" in paragraph 3
-"Geiese" -> "Giese"
the end.
hey did anyone notice when giambi hit that single over roberts' head he just held his middle finger up to either roberts or markakis? when he reached first base you could also see him mouth either "F*** you" or "F***er" to whomever he was talking to. when he said that he looked like he was sort of smiling, but when he was giving the finger it looked like a stare of death from jason, anyone else see that?
Yes, I did notice that zone. He joked with Roberts on first base after Roberts singled, so I think it was just all in good fun.
It was definitely done jokingly. Giambi is about as easy going as it gets when it comes to other players, and it was simply a joking gesture towards Roberts like "get that one". There's was definitely no animostity in the gesture.
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