Not Taking No/Not Taking Yes

for an answer.

Joe Giardi's sudden decision, in the wake of the Cubs hiring Lou, not to pursue any other mangerial positions this year suggests to me that he is not taking no for an answer--from the Yankees. George may have elected to make slow Joe "earn" his ridiculous salary in 2007, but not so slow Joe figures, rightly, that barring a championship, that will be it. He's circling the sky waiting for his mentor to collapse, eyeing the opportunity, now that Lou is out of the picture, to take the Yanks back to glory. I wish him luck; I think his year with the Marlins proved how right I was when I wished back in April that the Yanks would fire Joda and replace him with Joe G. but with another year gone, I think Mattingly, who by the way has never won anything, anywhere, is more likely to be the replacement. Mattingly may have proven a decent hitting coach, for those who would listen to him, but the failure of so many to do so hardly bodes well for his future as a manager.

On the other side of the ledger, after whining all April and May that the Yankees weren't picking up his option, Sheff is now refusing to take yes for an answer, proclaimiong that if they do. without giving him an extension, there'll be trouble. Here's the trouble there should be. If I had George's endless resources and could afford to blow off 13 mill, I'd pick up the option and park the son of a bitch in triple A for the entire season. Let him ride buses, make him play every day, and fine him heftily if he gets out of line. For someone who has sucked as bad as AROD every postseason, who has contributed exactly zero championships to this team, despite all the hype that surrounded him, who now is the fifth best fielding outfielder on the team, and a truly terrible first baseman, and who collected oodles of money last season for doing nothing at all, he has the gaul to complain about gwetting the verey thing he was demanding before he went down with the wrist. I mean give me a break. This guy is freakishly selfish and arrogant, even by the standards of pro athletes.

You'll Know Where to Find Me

at F*&! Joe Torre.

I said I'd post as events merit, and while I didn't expect to be returning so soon, I guess the dashing of this blog's fondest hope qualifies as an event worth commenting upon. I don't know what swayed George. The media was divided this time so he wasn't going to get killed for axing slow Joe, and since the players had just disgraced themselves and the organization, I can't believe their lobbying was takes all that seriously. The question of 7 mill might have entered into it; that is alot to pay someone for doing nothing, particularly when you've just paid Kevin Brown and Carl Pavano 4 times that for doing nothing. all I can say is that I think it's a shame that they didn't go out and get Joe Giardi, whose ytouth, vigor, and NL smarst would have done wonders to transform the team. As for Pinella, while I am a big fan of him as well, and believe he would have kicked some ass that badly needs kicking, his hiring would have ensured the continued tenure of AROD. That may be the one silver lining in this mess: the Yankees, feeling like they have ot change something, failed to pull the trigger on Torre, meaning that they will have to pull the trigger on AROD.

A willingness to trade AROD, to sign and then trade Sheffield, to decline Wright's option, to decline Mussina's option, might just put them back in the way of getting to the World Series. Consider, you have Wang, you bring up Hughes and maybe Clifford, you trade for Dontelle Willis (plua a third or first base prospect for AROD), you sign either Zito or Schmidt (but not both), you get relief help and a third or first base base prospect for Sheffield, and you have a dominant rotation that doesn't include Randy Johnson (or makes him a number 5), a stronger bullpen and a younger team.

Oh and by the way, you've rid yourself of "inveterate whiner" Mike Mussina, who really has gotten an awfully free pass compared to AROD. You know he's lost almost every big start he's had for the Yankees, including Game 5 Boston 2004, Game 5 LA 2005, Game 2 the stadium 2006. It makes no less sense to say they'll never win with Mussina as it does they'll never win with AROD.

It Has to Be Kismet

that I can add a last regular season blog to report that on this night of the Yankees' disgrace, the New York Daily News is reporting that the decision to fire Joda has already been made, as has the decision to hire Lou Pinella, as a number of the readers of this blog have been wanting for some time. While I am sick about the way this came about, I am happy to say as a last regular season gesture that this blog and the contributors to it have been at last vindicated in the court of Yankee opinion. Apparently the one thing brian cashman, the Tampa crew and George himself, when cogent, can agree upon, is the very thing that has provided the foundation for this forum. They have joined us as we say with one voice and hopefully fo the last time: Joe Torre is F*&!ed; F*&! Joe Torre.

To paraphrase my wife on Passover--
NEXT YEAR IN THE PROMISED LAND

Jesus Wept

or would have were he a Yankees fan. If anything, this game was still more ignominious than the last one, particularly coming on the heels of the last one. Think about the following inconceivable truths. The Yankees scored not a single meaningful run since Damon's homer in the 4th of Game 2 set them on a path to sweep the series. The Yankees greatest line-up in history managed to go 20 consecutive innings without scoring a run of any kind. The Yankees' 3 meaningless runs in the last couple of frames still came without a hit with RISP, putting their consecutive hitless streak under those conditions with 2 outs at over 20 consecutive bats covering the entire series. AROD finished this series 1-14 after having gone 2-15 in the ALDS last year. In neither series did he drive in a run, let alone homer. This year he had a single, making his slugging average the same as his batting average .073. Even a hit by pitch couldn't get his OPS above the Mendoza line.

Since this is a blog officially dedicated to the inexcusability of Joe Torre as Yankee manager, no post-mortem would be complete without a brief examination of his continued failings. We have long made some distinction between Torre the clubhouse manager, a role invested with such mystery one was inclined to extend him the kind of faith that ignorance makes necessary, and Torre the field tactician, a role in which his errors were so conspicuous as to compel insistent and virulent denunciation of his performance. Well, the field tactician did not go down without leaving still more material for his detractors. For example, he clearly compounded the error of sitting Sheffield against the lefty by playing him against the righty. Having decided AROD's bat was no help--and that's what being dropped to 8 in the order meant--he should have sat him down for a more reliable glove. I could go on about then stupidity of starting Wright, a gopher ball machine, against a team like the Tigers, who are almost as dependent on the homer as the Yankees are. But I think it more important at this point to remark that the sacred Ark of the (Pinstripe) Covenant has been pierced or, if you prefer Mr. Wizard's curtain has been breached and everyone has started paying attention to the man behind it. We may not know the inner workings of the Yankee clubhouse, but we must see at this point that whatever special talents Torre supposedly had at managing players has passed into a fraudulent obsolescence. He is still able to keep the peace and hold their respect. But these are but the means to the end of winning, of getting them to play winning baseball, sustaining that winning performance ove the course of the season and, in the final end of final ends, getting them to heighten their performance in the postseason. The last few years, transfigured by the last few games, have revealed that Torre's continued reputation for operating the means no longer translates into achieving the ends. The Yankees failed the last few years, but in the last few games failure, though assured, was the least of their problems. They quit on themselves, they quit on him, and they quit on their fans. Torre always cost them games with his dunderhead moves, like taking Wang out in game 1, but the devil's bargain was that he reputedly inspired them to play well enough to cover his own incompetence. Now he is not even motivating them to play well enough to provide adequate support for the most brilliant of tacticians. His clubhouse proficiency has, if anything, fallen to a level below his laughably boneheaded field generalship. He has made it incredibly easy on Steinbrenner. For George, the fond memories of the late nineties dynasty are fading even faster than they are for the rest of us. The only dimension of Joda's vaunted leadership George knows is the present dimension: where a once proud, if never bright warrior huddles in the late afternoon October gloaming and tries to keep himself from surrendering to slumber as the troops all too willingly surrender themselves to defeat. HURRY UP PLEASE, IT'S TIME.

JOE MUST GO!

And a number of wanna be Yankees, AROD, Johnson, Mussina, Sheffield, Fahrnsworth, Meyer, along with one didn't wanna be a Yankee, baby Carl Pavano, and at least one true Yankee, Bernie Williams, must follow in its wake.

The problems with the Yankees are so immense even the pundits have noticed. One columnist spoke of "all the Yankees weakneeses being exposed." Well who was pointing out all those weaknesses, we were, while the pundits greeted the ALDS as the second coming of Jesus..err Ruth, Gehrig, Coombs and Muesel. Another pundit--I think it was Lyons, usually the village idiot in that benighted world--spoke of the absence of a figure like O'Neill, who would get in the face of the other veterans if they weren't leaving enough blood on the field. The weakness of the Yankees in other words was twofold, like the weakness of Torre himself. There were the operational shortcomings: mediocre starting pitching, inflammable middle relief, over reliance on the long ball, poor situational hitting, inconsistent to godawful fielding. But there was also an inner softness, a lack of fire, an inability to feel desparate and to act on that desparation. The specter of a season without Matsui and Sheffield produced it briefly, but then it was gone, and what was left in its place was really, in the end, quite ugly--it was the difference between losing and being losers.

And if you don't think there is a difference, remember game 6, 2001, the Yankees are down and for all intents and purposes out. It is the last time, everyone knows, that Paul O'Neill will be getting in anyone's face, including his own, out of his nearly maniacal loathing of failure. And with the Yanks in the field for the last time at the stadium, the cheers went up Paul O'Neill...Pauly...Paul O'Neill. And what the fans were saying in the confession of the loss to come was that these Yankees were not, would never be, for all of that, losers. And so of course they came back to win the damn game, the second in a row they pulled from the ashes. In that performance, by both the fans and the players, one can see a team losing a series, as they did, while remaining the very anti-type of the Yankees that lost the series today. Instead of the last chants for Pauly, we have the execration of AROD, and today's miniaturized superstar not only deserves the abuse as much as that outsized star deserved the encomium, but each man is emblematic of the team going down to defeat: the one indomitably, the other ingloriously.

Lastly, when I said I would do a post-mortem, I meant for this year's blog as well as for the team it celebrates. I want to thank Munson for his kind words in the last comment box, both about his enjoyment of the blog (he certainly contributed to mine) and to his hopes that the blog would return, with full understanding if it wouldn't. I've actually been thinking about that question since the Yankees went down 6-0 last night and the prospect of a sudden October chill grew palpable. And as we went from prospect to reality, it became increasingly apparent to me that I would find it too hard to endure an end to my blogging experience as sudden as the end to our season. So I have decided that while I'll do no more blogging in the immediate aftermath of this weekend, I will post when events of the off-season seem to merit, and as I find most everything interesting, I imagine I'll wind up posting pretty regularly, though by no means daily. When spring training starts, my plan now is to return the blog to the frequency of this season (over 250 posts plus comments since April). I hope I'll have to change everything about the blog, the title (with Torre's exit) and the set of problems we talk about. I hope the names Tyler Clifford and Phillip Hughes and Tabata will all enjoy the currency that AROD had this year. But mostly, I hope you all will return as well and resume the virtual conversation, though, like Munson said of the blog itself, I will understand if you decide not to. I want to thank everyone once more for hanging out with me and I hope you'll be doing it again as your passion for Yankees baseball reasserts itself. Until then, take care of yourselves, and remember as we suffer this disappointment that things, even in the controlled universe of sports, could be so much worse. We could, for example, be chowderheads.

Those Who Are About to Die

salute you. On what I fear will be the last day of the season, I want to thank everybody who has read and responded to this blog. I like to think it made the frustrations this team put us through a little easier to take--provided what we might call analytic therapy. I know at any rate that it did that much for me, thanks entirely to all of you.

I wanted to blog a season of Yankees' baseball and should they lose today I will have done that. I suspect the blog will affect me during the off season rather like a phantom limb: every time I go to my computer to check my e-mail or retrieve a file, I will instinctively start toward the site only to remember that it was amputated not just by the seasonal cycle but by the Yankees' failure.

To which one can only say F*&! Joe Torre now and forever.

I'll be back after the game either to continue blogging the season (hope like rust never sleeps) or to share a final post mortem.

Well, That Was the Baseball Equivalent

of crapping yourself in public. I can't remember the last time the Yankees put on such a digraceful performance. unlike last year's disappointment against the Angels, where they were torpedoed in part by unrestrained hustle (the bubba-Sheff collision), this time they showed no fight whatsoever. They were unlucky with the bad call at third, to be sure, but did AROD get in that umpire's face? Did he make it clear that they were not going to have outs stolen from them without a beef? No, he smirked. Did Joe go out and argue? No, he looked catatonic. Then they blew the pickoff play, which was just inexcusable. It was a return to the little league fielding of earlier in the year and it cost them another run.

Speaking of returns, I guess yesterday wasn't enough of a return to the bad old days of swinging for the fences,leaving men on base and striking out too much. They gave up 8 K's to a junkballer tonight, went 0-18 with men on base, 0-18!, and only advanced one runner all night, one runner, getting him from 2nd to third. I think you have to go back to that time they got no-hit by 6 guys for a performance this dismal, and that wasn't as strong a line-up. If nothing else, slow Joe should make them realize that Comerica is too damn big to sit around hoping for homers. Juan Gone tried it and it ruined his career.

Of all the people who showed no fight, the worst was Torre. It was clear by the 4th inning that with the exception of Matsui, who owns lefties for some reason, the left-handed hitters in the line-up--Damon, Abreu, Giambi, Cano--couldn't really touch Rogers. But look at the righties--Jeter had a hit, got robbed on another shot and walked, Posada had 2 hits and launched a long fly out to left center, Williams didn't get any hits, but he did miss a homer by millimeters. My point is that while Rogers dominated lefties it only looked like he dominated the whole team because they're were so many lefties in it. Taking away AROD--who as Z points out can't hit righty pitching, can't hit lefty pitching, can't fucking hit underhand pitching--the righties were putting swings on Rogers, but they were spaced out through the line-up, interrupted by futile lefty hacks and even more futile hacks from the blooperstar. Joe had to make a command decision early to pinch-hit Sheff for Giambi, Cabrera for Abreu, and make Rogers face a predominantly right-handed line-up. That was the only chance. But to expect slow Joe to act quickly is like expecting AROD to take the team on his back: you know based on reputation, each of these things should happen, and you know based on experience, they are never going to occur.

For heaven's sake, having dropped Gag Boy to 6th in the mildest possible vote of low confidence imaginable, Mr. Wizard punishes AROD's 3 strikeout no-hit afternoon by returning him to clean-up, where he can do to the Yankees offense what bad spinach does to your nervous system.

All of the talk out of Torre after the game was about how great Rogers was and how tough the Tigers are, a continuation of the mutual respect theme that has reigned from the beginning. I'm sorry, you should respect the Tigers, but you should know in your heart that Kenny Rogers isn't good enough to shut this line-up down and that you've just embarrassed yourself on national TV. After Game 2 Leyland said he just hoped every body now realized that Detroit is a playoff caliber team. Fair enough. After this game, Torre should have said that he hopes everybody now has serious doubts as to whether the Yankees are a playoff caliber team. A playoff caliber team, he might have said, has heart and resilience, and we exhibited neither tonight. A playoff caliber team can rely upon its superstar, and we can only rely on ours to fail. A play off team can execute simple plays like the pick-off without losing the runner somewhere between first and second; we cannot. A playoff caliber team has starting pitchers who show their guts in the middle innings, not pitchers who go belly up.

When was this team good? When they had no reason to believe they were. When they didn't have Matsui and Sheffield. When they actually wondered if they were going to score enough runs. Now that they're back at full strength, they are that team the team of April and May, the team that wasn't going to make the playoffs, that wasn't any good at all. By returning to full strength from the depleted glory days of July and August, thae Yankees have lost their strength to their (and other people's)conviction of their greatness. It's not complacency exactly, it's just the assumpition that they are too good to lose in the end, which dulls the concentration just enough to leave something less than a playoff caliber team. Torre has to let them know that right now they suck. Cause as long as they continue to believe their murderer's row press clippings, sucking is all they'll do.

As for Torre himself, a loss to Detroit, a team with only one decent starting pitcher and one 300 hitter, should bring an end to his once storied and now increasingly pathetic career as Yankees skipper. Jeez, Casey Stengal got fired just because Bill Mazeroski got lucky. How much concentrated ineptitude and inertia does Joduh have to display before the ax falls. I know the players love him, but that doesn't mean, anymore, that they win for him or in spite of him. If it were my 200 mill out there stinking up Comerica Park, and I still had my faculties, I'd be thinking, you've got one last chance to motivate and manage this team to victory, here and at the stadium. You have one last chance to make the bold moves necessary to do so, one last chance to get this team back to playing baseball, instead of home run derby. One last chance to play Cabrera, one last chance to bat Matsui 4th instead of 7th, one last chance to run the bases and make Pudge throw you out, which by the way he was unable to do this year. One last chance to play to win, instead of playing in the expectation that you will.

Same Old Story

While the last post tried to look at some different elements in the loss today, we should not forget the standards. The Yanks went 1-8 with RISP and struck out nine times. What's more, with the top 3 guys, who carried the team Tues., getting 4 hits among them, the middle of the lineup was a dead zone, 0-10, 6 strikeouts (out of 9 for the team) and a bunch of LOB. We all know AROD isn't, and won't be producing (see last post), but I'm not sure the Yankees can survive a similarly unproductive Sheffield. Meanwhile cano is really feeling the pressure. It's not just that he's yet to get a hit, but he's jumping at the ball. Would putting his buddy Cabrera in the line-up, maybe right ahead of him. robby has always been talented, but he really took off this year after his injury, which was also after Melky had become an everyday player.

The anti-Cone; and murderer's row?

ESPN 's game summary included the following piece of wisdom: "Mussina's big curve ball was sharp, but he mad just enough mistakes to lose." Exactly. that's why his fingers, like AROD's, are ringless. He is the anti-Cone. Both had effective but not blinding fastballs; both had a dizzying array of breaking pitches; both had great control; both could use a variety of arm angles; both were smarter than your average pitcher and worked the mind to succeed; both were good for about 7, rarely longer. but whereas Cone always pitched just well enough to win big postseason games, Mussina pitches just well enough to lose. Of the many differences between the dynasty yankees and today's team, one we haven't discussed much reared its head today. In 1998, the yankees frequently scored in the middle innings, just like today, and then watched as Pettite or Cone or Wells made the lead stand up for the set-up men and Mo. We've talked aboutt he problem with the set-up corps, but the truth is that problem is magnified by the inability of the starters to hold slim, hard-won leads from the middle to the late innings.

This is all the more a problem because for "the greatest offensive line-up" anyone (Gammons, Morgan etc) has ever seen, these guys go dormant alot. They are no better offensively as a team than the 90's dynasty, even though they are much better as a collection of individuals. As for their reputation as a modern day murderer's row, it is substantially, and might be completely undeserved. I don't really know the ins and outs of the 27 Yankees, but I have to wonder, were they able to destroy good pitching or only mediocre to poor pitching. The 2006 Yankees haven't hit good pitching all that often this year and so expecting them to mash in the playoffs may be delusional. They certainly went silent against the tigers bullpen today. While the starters would have held the lead during the dynasty, it is also true that no 1 -run lead wass safe going into the seventh against the Yankees at the stadium. That this one held up is demoralizing to say the least.

This is a blog about the deficiencies of Joe Torre, so let me just highlight the mistake he made to contribute to today's defeat. He knows AROD is a choker; that's why he dropped him to 6th in the order. Instead of the drop itself being controversial, I think the shallowness of the drop is casue for criticism. If Matsui was hitting 6th, we would have scored more runs today and that's not really a surprise. Why bury your 2nd best clutch hitter behind a guy who leads baseball in career everything, but when it counts strikes out three times running. Matsui's hits today were all marooned at a distance from the potential rallies and the marooning agent was AROD. The Yankees cannot depend on AROD to win; we all know that; the Yankees know that; the fans know that; and even the pundits know that, though they are loath to admit it. As BGW correctly stated, the Yankees can only win by making AROD's offensive performance irrelevant. So slow Joe, who has slowly woken up to AROD's futility, should put him in a position in the order where he can be irrelevant. That position is not 6th behind a base on balls machine like Giambi. That position is 8th. That's where in a DH league your least dependable hitters, your biggest liabilities go, and until he proves otherwise, that's exactly what AROD is in the postseason. As it is, Torre is certainly nopt doing AROD, let alone the team any favors. In game one, he gets a nice hit right after Giambi puts the Yanks up 5-0. thenwith the game tightened to 5-3 he strikes out--looking, of course--with men in scoring position. Today he whiffs three times, once with the bases loaded. what is more, in that at bat, Verlander was going through a spell of wildness and AROD bailed him out by swinging at a ball on the first pitch; then Verlander grooved one and AROD just fouled it off. Whenever that happens on strike 2, you know he'll be frozen for strike three.

Query

Does the postponement help or hurt the Yanks?

Does it break the momentum from the other night? Or does it give their bullpen some needed rest? Does it make Verlander even rustier (hw hasn't pitched in 11 days now? Are they better in the day than at night? Does the extra day help Mussina at all?

At Least He Knows

Asked about yanking Wang in the seventh, torre quipped, "That was a great piece of managing." So at least he's not trying to defend it--of course he's not trying to explain it either. Perhaps that just isn't possible.

Twin Killing

With the A's second improbable win in the Metrodome, it becomes all but certain that the Yankees will be playing them shortly, provided they continue to put away the Tigers. is this good luck or bad? Actually a pretty interesting calibration.

If the Twins go down, the Yankees' pitching, the weakest part of the team, will have dodged the stronger offensive team. The run of Mauer, Cuddyer, Morneau, Hunter, is alot more potent than anything the A's have to offer. The A's have only one hitter, Payton,over 300, in their line-up and only one other person, Kendall, who is even close (and he is pretty punchless). Thomas has been great, a giambi type without quite the OBP, but there is really noone else that is at all scary, which means you can and should be pitching around him ina way you can't with an Ortiz. Swisher's got power but he's a 245 hitter who doesn't walk all that much, Chavez has been dreadful in every respect atthe plate, and neither Ellis, nor Kotsay nor Scuttaro can hit as well, for average or power, as alex gonzalez for Boston--they are all more along the lines of Alex Cora.

Additionally, the A's park does not provide its team with the same home field advantage as the Metrodome. Remember the A's lost the 5th game there in 2004 against the Sox, they lost the fifth game there in 2000 against the Yankees and they lost games 3 and 4 there to the Yankees in 2001. Being so odd, so loud, having artificial turf, etc. the Metrodome takes much more getting used to and is much more tailored to the kinds of teams the Twins build. The A's park is, except for its spaciousness and those deep foul territories, pretty generic.

On the flip side, the A's have deeper pitching than the Twins or the Yankees. If they manage a sweep, they will have kept rich Hardin fresh for the ALCS and that could be a problem. Their bullpen however is neither as deep nor as formidable as the Twins. They have a really good set-up man and a good but overrated closer. they have no shutdown men in the 6th and 7th to compare with a Reyes or a Rinclon or a Crain. The Yankees may be able to work their signature offensive strategy to better effect against the A's. Haren has been really bad for the last month, as has blanton (no longer in the rotation), but the Yankees have never hit Haren well. On the other hand, they have owned Zito and they are typically very good against a control pitcher like Loaiza. he's been getting everyone out in the 2nd half this year, but I am confident the yankees can handle him. so figurung they won't hit the H and H boys, will hit zito and Loaiza, and should be able to keep the a's relatively in check, I see a 6 to 7 game series either way.

Watching the A's-Twins, and I have seen both games, I have to say the A's have impressed me less with their talents than the Twins have impressed me with their inability ot hadle the playoff pressure at home, something I would never have imagined from them. In game one Castillo ran them right out of an early rally that might well ahve proven decisive. They could have given Santana an early lead and I have to believe that would have made him tougher and more careful. Today, the great CF Torri Hunter made played a routine single into an inside the park home run that won the game. Unbelievable!

Speaking of which I am a connosieur of bad baseball announcing. I collect egregious moments, replay them in my head, memorialize them for myself. Today, I heard a real doozy. It's the top of the seventh, 2 out, a man on first and Mark Kotsay at the plate. He hits, as I said, a sharp liner to center, a stock issue single, which would not have even tempted the runner, Ellis I believe, to test Hunter's arm by going to third. I don't know what possessed Hunter to try for the spectacular play, but he had to move a pretty good way to his right and instead of rounding the approach off to make sure he got behind the ball, he took the shortest distance between two points, which in the case was the most acute angle, so that when he failed to reach the spot where it landed, he had no way of preventing the ball from rocketing across the turf to the center field wall. not suspecting that Hunter would try such a reckless maneuver, the right-fielder was slow to back-up, allowing Kotsay to round the bases. Two runs scored to make it 4-2 in a game where every tally hiterto had been a nail biter. Well, the TV crew shows the play from every possible angle, tries to imagine what Hunter was thinking, speculates, not unintelligently, that he might have forgotten there were two outs, making a putout on the ball less urgent, and then inevitably describing how bad he must feel. As they wrapped up the play by play guy and the shitteater (Rick Sutcliffe) turn to Eric Karros for a last word of inside baseball player insight, an oxymoron I like to call jock-ocular-ity, and he proclaims, with all the orotund gravity he can muster, "Torri Hunter made a play that could prove quite detrimental to his team." Gee, you think! I beleive Karros was so impressed with himself for saying the word detrimental that he might have confused that with actually saying something. Even Sutcliffe was stunned into silence by this piece of vacuity. Did you hear about the color guy who was so stupid the other color guys noticed?

A Playoff Analogy

Jeter is to impressive as Torre is to imbecilic.

I don't think I have ever seen a better played game than Jeter turned in tonight. 5-5, 10 total bases, great baserunning to make sure of the 2 doubles, starting that crucial and by no means routine DP in the third. Sublime.

By the same token, I have never seen a manager screw up so badly in a playoff win before. Wang struck out the big man, Ordonnez, to end a very rocky fifth then cruised through the sixth and the first 2 outs in the seventh when, with only 90+ pitches under his belt, our best starter turns around to find out that for no conceivable reason at all, the moron who gets so much credit for this team's success is taking him out of the game. What is more, he is taking him out for a pitcher who has no business even being on the playoff roster. A pitcher that every hitter in the league, lefty and righty can hit, except David Ortiz, for nuerological reaons not fully understood by team physicians. A pitcher who single handedly lost the season finale against the red sox. yes, I give you, or rather Torre gives you,Mike Meyers. I'd rather see Garth out there pitching.

Now to get to basics. Torre has, with the exception of Rivera, a bullpen whose mediocrity is only exceeded by its exhaustion. It is, as everyone knows, the salient weakness on this team. As a result, you should not rely upon it unless you have to, nor should you be making these guys work anymore than is necessary. You certainly don't bring in a crapmeister like Meyers just to show you are still awake. The left handed hitter that clueless Joe brought him in to face, Granderson, is no big threat under any circumstances--well, except the circumstance of Meyers himself pitching. Called upon, with 2 outs and noone on, to retire a batter who would surely not have hurt Wang, Meyers promptly gives up the gopher ball. That one pitch pretty much summarizes Meyers worth as a hurler, which is considerably less than zero. Having brought him in for no good reason, torre suddenly has every reason to take him out, which meant that meddlesome Joe had to use Proctor and then Farnsworth before Rivera. In other words, by taking out a dominant and untired Wang on what can only be called a whim, Jo-duh wound up wearing down almost his entire playoff bullpen.

Good work, blow Joe. Noone can say you didn't make every effort to cost the Yankees the game! You failed this time but who knows, you may have taken the first step toward costing them the series. We'll have to see what other ingeniously pointless and self-defeating moves you can cook up as the series proceeds. I for one have every faith in you.

Oh, and Bobby Abreu tonight became more of a Yankee than AROD is likely ever to be.

Slammin' Joe

Torre's explanation [of batting AROD 6th} that he might as well pull the lineup out of a hat fell short. Torre is getting paid $7 million a year to manage the Yankees, and if he actually used the hat method, he should return the money.

John Hayman

Actually he should return the money in any case.

Just Like That

you go from thinking the Twins are maybe the most dangerous team in the playoffs to thinking there's no way they get out of the first round. They can't lose with Santana at home, and yet they did. Was BGW wrong about the qulaity of their hitting or was Zito just that dominating. I watched the games and it looked to me like the Twins just missed a bunch of hittable balls up in the zone. And why were they pitching to Thomas with the bases empty? He's the only guy on the A's who can hit; just walk him and move on.

Well, I Saw It Coming

Slow Joe has released his line-up for tomorrow night and contrary to BGW's hopeful specualtion, he has not sat Giambi against the Lefty allowing Melky to play left while Hideki DH's. No Melky is on the bench as Torre inevitable pencilled the biggest names he could into his line-up. Perhaps in response to the lefty starter, Sheffield is hitting clean-up (he does kill lefties) and Rodriguez has been dropped to 6th, after Giambi. Joe wouldn't be trying to allay the pressure on AROD, would he? Robby will be the number 9 hitter, which I just think is a waste.
He should hit 5th, ahead of AROD. Hideki should be 7th, Posada 8th and Melky 9th.

The Luck of the Draw

can be crucial in the muti-phasic playoff era, and the Yankees have had their full share of good fortune already:

1. the Angels are eliminated. This is a team the yankees have proven they can't beat, even when, like last year and this, they are something short of world class.

2. The Red Sox are eliminated. Although this is a series the Yanks typically win and would have won this year, it is always draining, even when the Sox are doing their usual final fade-out.

3. The Yanks didn't get the Twins in the first round. Instead of facing Santana 2 out of 5, a scary proposition, the Yankees are more likely, should the Twins advance, to face him 2 out of 7. That sets them a much easier task.

4. The Tigers fell into the wild card by getting themselves swept, at home, by the worst team in the AL. How confident can this young group of players be going into Yankee stadium after a long September decline capped by a historic moment of collapse? how many teams in history have lost a pennant or division championship by dropping 3 straight on their own field to the worst team in their league?

5. The Yankees come off a restful home stand and go straight into playing at home at the start of this series. If they sweep the Tigers, and that is not impossible (neither of course is losing the series), they would have to play but one game away and head back for another 2 at the Stadium. Which brings us to...

6. Thge Yankees have home field throughout the playoffs and Series. This is a matter of luck because they didn't win 100 games, usually the benchmark for enjoying the advantage throughout. Neither the Tigers nor the A's played at all well in September, which was largely responsible for the Yanks securing home field.

7. There's no game Thursday night when my softball league plays and I'd have to miss the opening frames. I don't know how this contingency affects the yanks' chances, but it is lucky for me.

The moral of all this (excepting #7)is: there are really no excuses. If they don't come home with their 27th World title it will be because they just weren't good enough--and knowing what we all know about this team's bullpen, manager, and situational hitting inconsistencies, that might very well be the case. But with luck comes hope.

Joe Mauer is such a Wuss

Going 3-3, Derek Jeter climbed to within a point of Joe Mauer, who had the day off today despite the fact that thwe Twins remain in the race for the Division. After the tigers followed the twins inot the loss column today (ok maybe they can get swept by the Royals), the Twins still have a decent shot. Despite this, and while saying it would be nice to try and make that happen, Mauer allowed "that another day of rest would be nice too." You don't think he's trying to sit on the batting title do you, putting the individual accomplishment ahead of his team actually winning some thing (the wild card being the best loser)? At the least it's fair to say he's no Ted Williams, who cursed out his manager for suggesting he sit out the final meaningless game to protect what was probably the last .400 season ever.

Torre announced today that Sheffield had earned the right to play first in the playoffs. Assuming that Giambi has earned the right to be DH (and I think he has) and that Matsui has earned the right to be in the line-up (ditto), Melky has likely seen his last significant playing time this season. given that Bernie will be their number one pinch hitter--on a team that doesn't need any pinchhitters--we'll be seeing Cabrera come in the later innings for defensive ballast. He'll be the nandy Phillips of left field. So I'll pause now to say, thanks Melky. whatever happens from here on out, the yankees wouldn't even be in the playoffs without you.