And So He Was

Could Randy Johnson be the new, old Roger Clemens. Clemens hasn't completed a game in memory and Johnson likely will never finish a game again, but in his last two outings anyway, RJ has done what Clemens has been doing for the last 3 years, dominating into the middle innings knowing he's going to need help at the end. Johnspn's fastball velocity has been in the mid rather than the low nineties in the last two games (at least into the 6th-7th) and his slider has shown real verticality. A mechanical adjustment? A mental adjustment, i.e. working on the Jared Wright plan? I don't know, but with 9 starts left in the season, and if hew can pitch this well most of the time, he'll have no problem equaling last year's total of 17, and 19 seems a reasonable possibility.

Otherwise the Yanks finally got their grind on in the 8th inning, after having left another 14 on base through the first seven (a staggering 18 overall). AROD committed a doozy of a running blunder, getting doubled off on his way to third, essentially because he didn't really bother to hustle. But he did drive in the go-ahead run in the seventh in the most unlikely fashion for him--a productive out. All in all the Yankees did cut down on the strikeouts dramatically (only 4 by 3 batters, who went a combined 6 for 13, so you can't complain). A huge win that triggers the Jeter precept: if we don't win tomorrow, this win doesn't matter. And since tomorrow is against the lowly Orioles, it's especially true. Grinding is at a premium against the Orioles, because they'll make errors and hand over gifts, but you have to keep the pressure on to extract them.

Torre didn't make the major line-up shifts that some of us recommended topnight, but he did make two moves he could have seen urged on this blog. One was to put Giambi back in 4th and drop AROD to 5th, the way it used to be. As I said before, this is the way it should be; giambi is the RBI guy on this team: he is averaging over 9 ribbies for every 11 games, which puts him on pace for 135. I've complained about him clogging the bases after taking all those walks, but ther truth is he's the closest thing we have to David Ortiz this season (not all that close I know). When the table-setters do their job, you want Giambi to have a crack at delivering them. And he's more likely to get the chance hitting fourth. The other move was to drop Posada to 7th and promote Cano to 6th, which on this night anyway seemed to a more tonic effect on Posada than anyone else.

Meanwhile Boston not only lost, which naturally gives one pleasure as a Yankee fan. But Josh Beckett got lit up again, a happenstance that is for whatever reason, one of my top three sources of Shadenfreude in all of baseball.The other 2 at the moment: Jason Varitek's batting average and Kevin Millar losing his job on the O's of all teams.

Today's quiz: just last year, AROD was reckoned the best player in the game becuse he was a true 5-tool player. How many tools does AROD have left? Check tomorrow for the answer.