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.