You are here: Home » General » Anything Can Work
Including adopting the preferred strategy of talk-radio callers and pinch hitting for your #3 hitter. Dammit.
Meanwhile, Soriano throwing 5 balls, having two of them called strikes, and then having his first decent pitch absolutely crushed for a line drive DP…hopefully this doesn’t mean that the Oriole extra-inning record isn’t about to turn into a pumpkin.
UPDATE: *&^$$^&%$
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Las Vegas Personal Injury Attorney
Sarasota Law Firms
Need Cash? Sky Loans can
help you! quick and easy money loans.
Bridging Loans
Paul Campos, Above the Law 2011 Lawyer of the Year
Erik Loomis, HNN Cliopatria 2011 Best Series of Posts
For administrative, advertising, or other inquiries, please e-mail here.
It works when your #3 hitter shouldn’t be hitting third.
No one has a number three hitter who should be hitting third. The number three slot should be for your fourth best hitter or so–one and two should be on base guys, and then four gets to either bat in the first with runners on or lead off the second–and most teams put their best hitter there. You don’t want your best hitter to be the guy who leads the team in at bats with two out and nobody on.
So, you’d bat Cabrera first, Fielder second, and Jackson third?
rea,you probably remember the ’65 all-star game when gene mauch batted willie mays lead off because he wanted, at the margin, to get that one extra at-bat? (followed, i just looked it up, by aaron, stargell, and allen)
mays eventually scored what became the winning run after leading off the 7th drawing a walk.
There is, however, something to be said for putting speed in front of power, rather than power in front of speed.
They lead a charmed existence.
TheyRaul Ibanez leads a charmed existence. Fixed.They lead an
charmedexistence blessed by Satan.Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Mitt Romney to close another factory and outsource jobs to India.
And the two sets overlap greatly.
Ha ha ha! Because supporting a sports entertainment entity is the same as supporting layoffs. I get it.
That’s pretty unreal. If the situation comes up again, do they walk him bases empty a la Bonds?
Did Ibanez hit the winning HR? I was watching the bottom of innings from the safety of the feed under the Tigers/As game…
off a lefty.
First pitch of the twelfth. But he’s a lefty against the Oriole’s lefty specialist so that’s unpossible.
Well, he does generally hit nothing against LHrs. Good moves sometimes don’t work just as bad moves sometimes work.
i assume you mean that generically, scott: nothing bad at all about pinch-hitting ibanez in the 9th.
btw, the irony here is that the yanks decided to keep speed and defense (in the choices of gardner and nix) over right-hand platoon dh (in the form of andruw jones) mainly because jones tired badly post-all star and was having just awful at bats.
if he’d been on the roster, he probably would have hit for ibanez in the 12th, and the game could easily still be going….
Baseball, see, is a game about gut feelings and who’s clutch. All these “statistics” and “sabramutics” guys are just all cat and no hattle.
You left off the parts about pajamas and mother’s basement.
The cattle are wearing pajamas and kept in their mothers’ basements. You can see why their moms are so upset, to be fair.
i have no idea what this is supposed to mean: the stats support the idea of pinch-hitting ibanez.
his ops against righties this year is about 100 points higher than arod’s; his home run ratio is 1-16 at bats against righties, arod’s almost 1-32.
in addition, as a simple matter, arod has had no power since coming back from the broken hand whereas ibanez closed the season 15-37 with 4 homers.
so what’s the problem supposed to be?
as a side note, arod has been declining for 3-4 years now (by all sorts of metrics, the big ones being offensive wins above replacement and my own favorite, runs created per 27 outs), but the really big deal is the decline of percentage of fly balls as home runs, indicating his decreasing power. his career percentage is 18% (major league average over that time: 8 %), but his numbers the last 5 years are 17.8%, 16.8%, 14.9%, 12.2%. and this year 11.2% (undoubtedly the weak performance since the broken hand lowered it at the end of the season).
Well, if pinch hitting Ibanez was the right move, why didn’t he start? Girardi had to be wrong at least once.
well, you didn’t ask that question! it would have been a perfectly fine move to start ibanez as far as i’m concerned….
to get down to it, since coming back from the broken hand, arod has now had (including the orioles series) 138 plate appearances, 6 extra base hits, and an ops around .700.
what girardi was saying was that he was going to start arod anyhow because his obp has been decent, but were it up to me? yeah, i’d have started ibanez in the first place.
because i’m still enjoying the win, let me amplify that arod stat: over his career, he has an extra base hit 10.7% of his plate appearances, which in this case should mean 15 extra base hits, not 6….
ibanez, btw, has a 90-point ops edge over arod at yankee stadium as well….
Girardi is wrong lots of times. Not here, though. I’ve never liked ARod, so there. (Like lots of Yankees’ fans that way.) So I have no stake in seeing him start. But I can understand how NOT starting him tonight would have felt to his teammates, and would have been perceived by the O’s, as an admission of weakness. So, psychologically, it would have been a bad move for Girardi not to start him. Not rocket science.
Howard is crazy
What Howard said. All else being equal, A-Rod shouldn’t be starting against right handed pitchers right now.
Because you’re not clutch, obviously.
Good moves sometimes don’t work
See: Lasorda, T. Subheading: 1985 NLCS. Subheading: pitching to Jack Clark.
Yeah, I was just about to go to bed in suspense, and the Yankees saved me the trouble.
it’s not like arod has been swinging the bat well since the broken hand….
Isn’t there some sort of coincidence between Yankee titles and Democratic presidents winning elections?
There are some decent correlations- won early 60s, good in the late 70s, awful 80s-early 90s, won WS in ’96, 98, 99, 00 (so obviously Gore was the real winner) then fell apart in the 2000s including epically in 2004, then won in 2009. Ironically Steinbrenner was a noted Republican. The only poor correlations are the 20s and Eisenhower.
Dunno about the elections themselves, but the Yankees’ last title during a Republican administration was in 1958.
The real coincidence is between Kentucky NCAA wins and Yankee WS wins: six straight times, going back to 1949.
JFC, Valverde…
oakland! coco crisp strikes again!
Great, now Verlander has to pitch Game 5. Goddammit Baltimore better win tomorrow…
hey man! seriously, as a baseball fan, you should be happy for oakland regardless of the impact on the yankees chances….
I would also say that if Oakland faces the Yankees in the ALCS, Oakland would have a good chance of winning.
what turned both clubs around this season – from the yankees cruising with a 10-game lead and the a’s looking appropriately unlikely to go anywhere this season – was when the yanks came to oakland and got swept in a series of 1-run games in july i think it was.
of course oakland can beat the yanks….
I’ll go double or nothing now that Yankees win the ALCS. ;) (With Verlander out until Game 3, I agree that the A’s have a better chance — but will be hard for them to win Game 5 tomorrow.)
well of course i’ll take that on for a worthy cause, and sure, i don’t want to sound like i’m poor-mouthing: up 2-1 with a decent chance not to have to use sabathia again against baltimore, the yanks look in the best condition of the 4 american league teams to win, but not by so much that i feel authentic confidence (the way i did in 2009).
but sure: you’re on….
howard,
Don’t get too cocky about tonight – Phil “HR” Hughes is probably starting. If he is, he’ll be on a VERY short leash.
I might start Lowe instead, and have Phelps and Hughes ready in the bullpen.
Lowe over Hughes? You really shouldn’t start drinking so heavily this early in the morning.
the thing about hughes, c u n d gulag, is despite all the home runs surrendered, he was an average american league starter by virtually all other metrics: percentage of quality starts, average innings per start, starting era, etc.
but if he has any trouble, lowe, who pitched strongly the last couple weeks of the season, will certainly be the call.
Why would Lowe get the call over Phelps? Phelps replaced the Chevy in the rotation in the last week of the season, and not Lowe.
sherm, good question, and my answer is that in the circumstances of hughes being knocked out early, girardi – despite the success of both the oakland and baltimore young pitchers in this postseason – will prefer the guy who has got oodles of post-season experience.
Great, now Verlander has to pitch Game 5.
(1) There’s no one in the world you’d rather have start a decisive game.
(2) Don’t worry about the impact on a potential Tigers/Yankees series. The Tigers strength is their starting pitching.
(3) The thing to worry abot with the Tigers is the back end of their bullpen, as last night showed (Benoit and Valverde never blew a lead last year. Reversion to mean.)
Oh, I’m not saying I don’t expect the Tigers to win tonight. I’m saying I’d much rather Verlander be starting Game 1 against the Yankees.
7 game alcs, though–Verlander starting 3 and 7 would be fine. (Leyland will not use Verlander on short rest, though the heavens fall–see 2009 game 163).
Well, I’m sorta happy for Oakland, but my wife is from Michigan, so…I’m ambivalent.
Giant potato fail . . .
Go A’s!!! Go Giants!!! Never say die…unless you speak German.
Great song by a great band, now they just have to do the right thing and never ever reform, even for the obscene amounts of money that are being waved in their faces.
I’m sure you can see Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce performing together somewhere…
This song might have been more appropriate.
Fuck the Yankees. Just because.
1972. 40 years ago. 5-game playoff between A’s and Tigers.
A’s win first two at home.
Tigers shutout A’s to win game 3 in Detroit.
Game 4–A’s take two run lead into 9th inning. Tigers walk off win.
Game 5–A’s win pitchers’ duel, go on to win world series.
“Baseball gods take care of that stuff.”–Jonny Gomes