The Genius Maker #34

You have to give credit to TB, they just kept tacking on runs and the Yanks just couldn't stay with them. A very big set of AB's was in the bottom of the 3rd as the Yanks had 2nd and 3rd with nobody out after a few good bunts. The score was 3-3 and Teixeira, ARod and Cano were coming up. Teixeira weakly grounded to the pitcher and ARod and Cano struck out. I thought that was the biggest sequence of the game.

I was surprised Pettitte came out to pitch the 6th after having very poor command all day, but I think Girardi felt that he would let him face Pena as possibly his last AB because Pena has really struggled this year (hitting .194), but I thought Andy was done. After Pena's homer Pettitte's bad night was over. Honestly as bad as his command was, the ump was inconsistent and TB did a good job of driving the ball the opposite way for 2 of their homers. Overall, though the TB lineup is not that good and Pena having about a .650 OPS coming in it is amazing they are doing as well as they have...their pitching has been outstanding. Unfortunately, our pitching did a very poor job against this team and allowed far too many runs. Our offense did decent considering the guys playing...6 runs should be enough to win both games against them, but our pitching/defense didn't get it done.

The ump was bad again..sometimes both ways, but the ARod AB in the 9th was bad as he should have walked on 4 pitches and instead was down in the count.

Cano hit a dribbler down the 1st base line in the 8th inning and for some reason he ran on the left side (3rd base side) of the running lane which allowed Pena to barely and I mean barely touch him before reaching base. If he slid or ran to the right side I think he would have been safe.

Getting back to Pena, both his homers were on off speed pitches (curve from Pettitte and changeup from Chan Ho Park); with him struggling with the fastball Cervelli didn't do a good job. Cervelli has hit way over his head so far and obviously is a very good defensive catcher, but his pitch calling skills are still lacking some. there were many times where I said to myself why are you throwing there or that pitch. The off speed pitches to Pena were 2 of those times. To be fair, against Upton, I didn't want Robertson to throw another fastball outside but he did and Upton swung threw it, but in general Cervelli's calling skills are not as good as Posada's. He does need to learn the situations though and that comes with experience.

Just for some perspective, in these 2 games, TB had 2 guys hit their first homers of the year and Pena broke a 6-64 slide with his 2 dingers.

On a positive note, Robertson had nice life and good location on his fastball as he worked 2 perfect innings striking out 4. Miranda also is showing a decent eye at the plate and ripped a homer to go along with a lucky triple where Upton just lost the ball.

Now we move from the most important games of the year to the least important games against the NL...we just need to get some wins until the cavalry comes back and in this case it is Granderson as the main guy along with Swisher being able to play both ways. It was obvious his swing was different as Swish was swinging a lot more with the front arm (the left arm would let go much faster than normal.

We are losing a lot but there is no reason to panic as we are still in the top of the 3rd for the season and we are in good position...just need to get healthy.