The Genius Maker #22

Starting lineup...I meant to mention this the other day, but when resting players, I am surprised that Girardi plays Pena against lefties? I know he rests Nick Johnson that way and moves his players to DH sometimes, but why not play Pena and give rest when a righty pitcher is on the mound because Pena is a decent hitter from the left side of the plate, but awful from the right side. For perspective, last year Pena had a .818 OPS (hitting .333) batting as a lefty and had an OPS of .274 (hitting .120) from the right side of the plate. When we rest guys, it should be when a righty is on the mound. I do know that occasionally you want to give a guy a rest and it isn’t the perfect matchup, but putting Jeter at DH is not a “forced” rest and Girardi should wait to use Pena against a righty.

Cervelli had a great game yesterday, making an excellent catch going into the dugout 9with 2 outs and a guy on 3rd) on top of getting a triple that went past a diving Adam Jones, two singles and a walk! His OPS is now .941!

Gardner was productive again getting on base twice and tying the lead in SB’s with 12.

Burnett was very sharp showing good movement on his fastball in dominating this weak team. Burnett went 7.1 innings and allowed only 5 hits, 2 walks while striking out 8. Marte and Aceves each got an out, although Aceves allowed a long fly ball to RC that Golson ran down for the final out of the 8th. Speaking of Golson, he is a very fast OF’r and played CF with Gardner moving to LF. In the 9th the two of them converged on a ball to left center that either could have caught and what went through my mind was if Thames and Melky were in those positions the ball would have fallen for a hit. Those two can cover some serious ground. Golson appears to not have much stick (from what I have read), but can be used as a Gardner from last year type of player. I am not sure whether he is that fast, but he is clearly fast.

Both pitchers had a throwing error by throwing into the runners lane on a sac with 1st and 2nd nobody out. These were the 2 biggest threats of the game. It is the best time to sac.

Joba came in and picked up another easy save (3 run lead) looking about the same on back to back games. This was the part I was interested in; to see if Joba could throw 94-95 on back to back games and he did. It is a shame this isn’t 96-97, but I guess he just isn’t the same as he once was? His curve has been a better pitch than his slider the last two nights and I was thrilled to see Cervelli call for it as I was saying out loud, “throw your curve now.” The result was strike 3 looking, although I did think the pitch was outside. The ump was very inconsistent on the 3rd base side of the plate all game; very bad IMO.

Time for the sweep!