— Twenty-four, Twenty-five, Twenty-six.... ?
Tough spot
Today’s loss puts the Yankees in a tough spot, no doubt about it. And what makes things worse is they didn’t have to lose it.
Two Detroit runs were aided by balls skipping past Posada (a wild pitch in the fifth and a passed ball on the decisive run in the seventh).
Jeter handed Justin Verlander a free out in the first after a Johnny Damon single and just two days after he went 5-for-5. Sometimes being a good leader means being a bit selfish, Captain. Swing the damn bat.
All in all it was a nondescript game, where the Yanks looked pretty flat.
A lot is going to made of A-Rod’s three strikeouts today – but let’s try to take a somewhat objective look here (the speed and location features of the new MLB GameDay are sweet, by the way.).
In the first, Rodriguez took healthy cuts at a pair of 98 mph heaters from Verlander with the bases drunk with Yan-kees … and then the rookie dropped a 73 mph hammer curve on him. He just had no chance – then again, neither did any other carbon-based life form.
In the fifth, Verlander got him again – this time working the slider on the inside corner.
Finally, after Gary Sheffield flied out and Jason Giambi struck out, A-Rod faced Joel Zumaya. After wasting a slider away, here’s what the rookie dropped on Rodriguez:
103.
102.
100.
Three heaters, the last one being absolutely filthy and on the black.
Sometimes you just have to tip your cap.
I came away from today’s game being very impressed with Verlander and Zumaya. They’re both going to be very good for a very long time barring injuries.
So with the rainout, this sets up a cranky southpaw battle royale tomorrow night in Detroit.
In his postseason career, Randy Johnson is 7-8 with a 3.28 ERA … but his Division Series record is a terrible 2-7. It gets worse, those two wins were versus New York in 1995.
The Tigers counter with Kenny Rogers, who thankfully for the Yankees, hasn’t been much better. The Gambler is 0-3 in his postseason career with an ERA of 8.85.
Regardless of their history, either of these guys is capable of either shutting down the opposition or hanging sliders and crooked numbers all over the ballpark.
Now its not all that bad – this year, Johnson is 2-0 against the Tigers with a 2.57 ERA in 14 innings, with a 12/4 K/BB ratio. Rogers hasn’t faced the Yankees since 2004, but in his career he’s 5-7 with a 6.45 ERA.
When the Yanks dumped Javy Vazquez, Dioner Navarro and the rest on Arizona to bring in Randy Johnson – this is the type of game they had in mind. If Johnson doesn’t rise to the occasion, the Yanks will be in the most untenable position of having to send either Jaret Wright or Cory Lidle to the hill against Jeremy Bonderman with their season on the line.
There’s no two ways about it – if the Yanks don’t win tomorrow, it’s all but over.
Sean McNally
Posted: October 05, 2006 at 05:00 PM |
156 comment(s)
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Fans love seeing pitchers hit triple digits, so I have no doubt that most, if not all, baseball radar guns read high. I love watching Zumaya pitch, but I would be surprised in he was truly above 100.
You think the ones in Chicago would've helped out Freddy "86 and holding" Garcia a bit.
Oh, sure. I'll bet if Glavine hears/sees that, it makes him laugh, too.
I think you are right Sam, that was poor wording by me. One of the most accurate tests ever done had Nolan Ryan at 100.9 mph. I think that Zumaya probably hit 100-101. I am skeptical of 103-104.
Yep. It's not like the gun just adds 2-3 mph to everything. If it adds 5-7%, then the faster the pitch, the more it adds. Personally, I'm thinking that he was consistently 98-99 and touching 100. That's plenty hard enough, especially with shadows.
These days, they are only measuring Beckett's clubhead speed.
Beckett strikes me as more of a flycasting speed guy.
As for tonight, if Johnson gives up three straight hard hit balls in the first inning, Torre doesn't have to wait to warm someone up. He has a herniated disc in his back, Johnson can say he's injured, and Lidle can take as long as he needs to warm up.
This is a good point. However, the relevant thing about 100 being a magic number is that it was for a long time the record on "offical" gunss (my copy of the Guinness World Records says 100.9 I believe).
Regardless, the issue isn't whether Zumaya was throwing 103, but rather whether Zumaya is throwing 3mph faster than anyone else in baseball. That's the part that strikes me as unlikely. The wow factor isn't 103mph, the wow factor is "####, that's a hell of a lot faster than anyone else." And because it's so much faster than anyone else, it makes it unlikely to be a legit reading. Or alternatively, it is a legit reading, and everyone else's readings were slow or something. Either way, it's unlikely that the spread between Zumaya and other fastballs the Yankees have seen this year is actually as big as 103 would suggest.
See what I'm getting at?
In any case, if the Yanks were in bad shape before, what are they in now? I have to say, as a Mariner fan, my hope when A-Rod left was that he would never win a playoff series with any other team than Seattle; so right now, I'm pretty pleased.
Of course, he already won one. His first one. Pretty much by himself, too.
It's funny that A-Rod is going to be the goat here. Sure, had A-Rod hit this series, they'd probably be up 2-1, and maybe they would have had a shot last night. But the whole team has pretty much sucked it up here. They approached Kenny Rogers last night almost like they assumed they were going to tee off on him -- sort of like they approached Curt Schilling in Game 6 in 2004. They seem incapable of making adjustments during a game.
A-Rod isn't to blame here. The rest of the team has a .191/.255/.383 line with runners on base, .190/.227/.381 with RISP.
The pitching isn't to blame here, either. Nor is the defense. It's the offense.
And what the hell could they have done to improve the offense? NOTHING. There is no move that could have been made that would give them a better lineup, a lineup less likely to do what's happened here.
So what can they do? Fire Torre? If the problem is complacency, I could see that actually helping, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Joe walk away if they do lose tomorrow.
But really, this is just a "fluke". It's not a fluke that the Tigers have beaten the Yankees, rather, it's a fluke that the Yankees have been so inept on offense. They got shut down repeatedly by Adam Loewen, for crissakes. It just happens.
Does it "just happen" that they are this supposed juggernaut who keep getting derailed somehow one season after another in the post-season?
Or perhaps they just aren't all that great?
*ignores this*
Well, just a little: kevin, did you see the Kenny Rogers strikeout package from K-zone late in the game? He was painting - none of the pitches were anywhere near the middle. The Yankees were swinging and missing, true, but I am not of the belief that any ballclub could have hit Rogers too much last night.
Even given the series lead, if I could trade positions with the Tiger fans, I'm not sure I would. I think we have the better team, and if they can just score enough for Wright (I think they'll need at least five runs, if not more), it's Wang at the Stadium. The Tigers absolutely need to strike now, while they have momentum and while they have the pitching advantage.
On my "not goat" list - RJ. That's what a third starter does.
I completely disagree. It matters to me that the numbers be legit and there is no way that Zumaya is throwing 103 or 104. And this isn't because I think it's impossible, it's because according to these guns every single pitcher throws over 90. Hell, a forty year old Kenny Rogers was hitting 93. That's completely ridiculous, and if Rogers isn't hitting 93 then Zumaya isn't hitting 103. I remember when a 95 mph fastball was smoking. Now it's a Wang sinker. All of the numbers are ridiculous. I think you have to subtract 5 mph from the numbers but of course there is no way to know for sure.
There is a segment of the population that likes to believe that things are always getting better and that they are seeing something that's never been seen before. These people will believe what they want to believe regardless of what the truth is. The problem is that these radar guns give a false impression of scientific accuracy. Personally I think they are neither precise nor accurate.
Kevin's absolutely correct. They are not "that great." (I'm not being sarcastic.) You don't get to claim you're that great when you consistently fail to attain your goals. They may still win (ahem), but I think Kevin's basically on the money. The margin b/w the Yankees and the Tigers and anyone else is very very slim. That should be obvious to everyone.
wow
I tend to agree. Clearly, their offense is superior, but their pitching is only so-so for a playoff team. They've been shut down (less so by Verlander, but more or less) by good pitchers two night's in a row. I agree with TVerik that few if any hitters could have done much with Rogers last night-- he hit his spots all night long, and had great movement on his curve. I didn't see the Verlander game, but, knowing what he's capable of, I'm sure he had a lot to do with the previous win. And then there's the Tiger bullpen.
I think that, all told, the Yankees are the "better" team-- i.e., if we re-played the regular season 100 times, they'd finish with the better record more often than not (esp. with Abreu and Sheffield and Matsui). But that's not what matters now. This Tigers team can certainly beat this Yankee team in a 5 game (or a 7 game) series with some frequency.
All that said, I don't think this series is over. I wish it was. But Wright's been surprising this year, and that Tiger offense is not unstoppable. I think the Tigers are the favorite to win tonight, but actually less so than last night, given the respective years of Rogers and Johnson, and the relative strength and weakness of the Tigers and Yanks against LHPs.
Well, I think that is nuts. Take the lead every time. Every time. There is no situation, ever, in a five game series where you'd rather be down 2-1 than up 2-1. The latter part of your statement, though, is true, I think. The main advantage to the Tigers in this particular situation is having two shots to win the series but you have to figure their shot tonight is better than tomorrow. That doesn't even consider momentum, just pitching and home field. I wouldn't write them off if it goes back to New York, but they definitely swing back to being underdogs.
Say, didn't someone on the previous page say that one of the two old guys last night would pitch well? :)
I wonder if Sam would like Kenny back in a Met uni?
"The margin b/w the Yankees and the Tigers and anyone else is very very slim."
Yep. The 06 Yanks are very good, but they aren't the 61 or 27 team.
Are the A's better than the Twins? I really, honestly don't know. But I sure know who won the series.
Actually, I'd say they both pitched well. Johnson was pretty darned unlucky in the second, and if he got a break in that inning probably wouldn't have run out of gas in the sixth. Rogers was pretty lucky with some at 'em balls in the first few innings, not to mention Bernie's near-HR, before he got the curve and change really working and started making some Yankee hitters look very bad.
I wonder if Sam would like Kenny back in a Met uni?
Umm, no. Baseball is a game of redemption, but those post-season choke jobs for both NY teams don't get expunged from the record because of last night. Every dog has his day, and yesterday's was definitely Kenny's. So congratulations are certainly in order, but there's not going to be any rush to kiss and make up.
It's funny to read that this morning, after reading this yesterday:
If Kenny Rogers picks tomorrow to be the day he doesn't get #####-slapped by the Yankees... it probably won't be because of anything Rogers actually does.
And yes, I know it was a completely different person who posted that. Still, BTF often feels like it ought to adopt TMQ's motto: All predictions guaranteed wrong or your money back.
Nah. But on the other hand, I honestly wouldn't like to face him, either. Though he was classy about it afterwards, I think last night's performance was a LOT about proving some people in a certain big metropolitan city wrong about his heart and big-game guts. Well, he'd be itching to do that all over again because those same questions were raised in the other borough, too.
Say, didn't someone on the previous page say that one of the two old guys last night would pitch well? :)
I wish I'd said it that firmly . . . . but alas, my confidence in that happening was limited to saying I wouldn't be all that surprised if it happened that way, when everyone was SO certain it would be fireworks from first pitch to last. But hey -- compared to what some others have said on this thread about the outcome of the series and how the games would go, even going that far towards "calling" Rogers' performance stands out like I was psychic, so I'll take it!
As for the "true" margin between the Tigers and the Yankees, it is somewhere in between the negligible margin that appears in the final standings, and the impression that was created by two factors that really misled a LOT of observers. First, the way the two teams played down the stretch. Second, the number of stars on the Yankees and their history of hype and long presence in the post-season v. the relative anonymity & inexperience of the Tigers' roster. Those who said they couldn't even imagine how the Tigers' could possibly win -- even when the series was tied 1-1, for goodness sakes -- really took their eyes off the actual strengths and weaknesses of the teams.
Are most Yankee fans this retarded? That's absurd.
No. Are most Yankee fans that inarticulate? Quite possibly.
At the same time, it sure looked to me like Randy Johnson -- who has nothing left to prove to anyone -- was a lot more accepting of his fate, while Rogers seemed determined to fire every bullet he had left in his holster. Rogers pitched like it was the last game of his career; Johnson pitched like it was just another game.
How much effect that had on the outcome of the game, I have no idea. But it's something to think about next time you're picking a postseason winner based on veteran playoff presence.
I'll back off a bit, but I'm not saying that I'd rather be down 1-2 than up 2-1. I'm saying that I'd think about (I didn't even say I'd take it) taking the Yankees down 1-2 than the Tigers up 2-1.
As I said upstairs, I think that if this gets to Game 5, just pitching matchup and homefield means the Yankees have to be favored, possibly by quite a bit. I think this lineup can hit anyone, and I'm confident that they'll hit Bonderman. The only breach in my confidence is in holding the Tiger offense down for the 8 non-Mariano innings (and I guess that he'd pitch two innings today if needed).
But if that's true, and if it were to come to pass, doesn't that affect your confidence in what would happen in Game 5? The Yankees might well be close to Rivera-less tomorrow if they were forced to go to Mariano to block in the 8th inning tonight.
Of course, that's getting way ahead of ourselves . . . .
:)
The '06 Yankees are much better than the 61 team.
The yankees are working on hitting fades on those dog leg rights, SJ.
Two hundred million dollars just doesn't go as far as it used to, huh?
For starters, a few of the players on the '61 team are dead.
Man I hate elitist Yankee fans. The baseball world does not revolve around Yankee Stadium
Why not try directing your hatred where it belings? He was summarizing the POV of the national media, not speaking on behalf of Yankee fans the world over. Those elitist Yankee fans you hate would never express this sentiment, since the premise is totally incredible (in the literal sense of that word). It is obvious to them that the loser A-Rod will doom every team he ever plays on.
Someone didn't see Ken Burns' "Baseball"!
Looks like the law of averages finally decided to help Kenny out...
Looks like the law of averages finally decided to help Kenny out..."
I was wondering what thread I wrote that in. Boy is that embarassing huh? Jeter did hit Rogers hard twice, but I have never been more wrong in my life. I actually was thinking about that post and a couple others as I was fading into a drunken oblivion towards the end of the game. And then I woke up in Williamsburg Brooklyn. It was a bad night all around.
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