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April 17, 2008

Moving On

Not much to say about last night's debacle -- where, by the end of the fifth inning, your scorecard had likely devolved into "a hopeless jungle of lines and squiggles and filled-in circles". Hell, even Yankee fans want to move on.

It was the 50-minute fifth inning that was the turning point. After a wild pitch scored Melky Cabrera and gave New York a 7-3 lead, the Yankees had a 90% chance of winning the game. That dropped down to only 26% after Dustin Pedroia's two-run single capped Boston's six-run fifth inning, putting the Sox up 9-7, but when the Yankees answered with four runs in their half of the fifth, their chances were back to 80%.

From there, LaTroy Hawkins and Brian Bruney did their jobs of stopping the Boston bats, while Julian Tavarez and Mike Timlin could not do the same with the Yankees. ... New York's chances of winning were 93.6% when Mike Timlin came in for the eighth inning, so his eight-batter implosion really had little effect on the final outcome. Still, after facing 14 Yankee batters (2.1 IP), Timlin has allowed 8 hits (2 singles, 4 doubles and 2 home runs) and 7 runs.

The 24 runs were the most in a Red Sox-Yankees game in the Bronx since April 21, 1956 (Yankees 14-10) and the last time the Yankees scored at least 15 runs against the Red Sox at home was July 7, 1954 (17-9 win). The 1954 game took only 2:40 to play. Last night's time was 4:08.

X-rays on Kevin Youkilis's left foot were negative after he fouled a ball off his big toe in the sixth inning. He is questionable for tonight. ... Coco Crisp may miss the next few games due to soreness in his right leg.

Clay Buchholz:
The big turning point in the whole game for me was not the two home runs, but their catcher, who I had [2-2] and I threw a fastball and I was almost at the point where I was walking off, but I didn't get the call. ... It seems like every time I get in a hole and I need to throw a pitch for a strike and I throw it they get a bat on it and foul it off ... that's what so hard about pitching to lineups like this.

11 comments:

  1. Note that Timlin claims that his pitches that were hit were still quality pitches. Do you believe him? They WERE sort of dinky hits, just like the hits that did in Buchholtz.
    I'm trying not to let my It's-time-to retire-Timlin bias distort my vision here, but when you have an ERA over 20, it's unreasonable to expect your assertions that you are pitching well to be accepted without skepticism...

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  2. Speaking of only last night, maybe.

    He got ahead of Jeter 1-2 and walked him on 7 pitches. Abreu fouled off 5 pitches before fanning. Slappy's double on 0-1 was well-hit to LCF and hopped over the wall for a double.

    He BBIed Shemp. My note for Posada's first-pitch double: "jam, flair rf line". Giambi crushed the first pitch deep to RF but foul. On 2-1, another double, but: "flair, lf line, 7 long run".

    Then Cano flied out to CF on the first pitch and Moeller did the same on 1-0.

    Some crappy luck, sure, and as fangraphs shows, the game was fairly out of reach when he came in. But there were no cheapies in his other two NYY appearances.

    He did well in Cleveland (a perfect 8th on 10 pitches, 8 strikes). I don't want him around, but he's going to get some more innings.

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  3. Well, even though the game was pretty much lost, I'm counting that as one of the five explosions Tito and Theo will give Timlin before he's asked to become a mascot or a coach or something...unless he has a string of effective outings, of course. Timlin has to be at least a relaiable two inning pitcher to be worth carrying. If Hanson starts putting it together, the pressure on him will become tremendous.

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  4. Why aren't more catchers pitching coaches?

    Interesting read. Mostly filler though, but a good time killer whilst eating lunch..

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  5. Even as parody, that The Onion article is really depressing.

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  6. I laughed at it.

    Yankees officials did not allow Williams' family to attend the burial, citing the fact they were not "true Yankees" ...

    And this fake Hank quote is pretty damn close to what he would actually say: "Not that this organization believes in curses. We're the Yankees. We believe the success of our team is based purely on our players and their on-field performance. And we act accordingly."

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  7. Timlin has to be released, doesn't he? The guy's ERA has to be pushing 30 at this point ... 30! I just don't believe he has anything left.

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  8. Timlin has to be released, doesn't he? The guy's ERA has to be pushing 30 at this point ... 30!

    NO! I won't stand for such slander!
    Why, his ERA is only 27!

    The other two Socks with ERA over 10 (Corey 14.54 and Snyder 21.60) have both been dumped.

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  9. As for Timlin, I've jumped on Tim's bandwagon of dealing with him "old yeller style"

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