Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Genius Maker Pre ALCS

Great job boys!!! Nice to take Minnesota down again…they must really hate us…9 in a row against the Twins!

Hughes was fantastic, but I have to say Minnesota did not swing the bats very well. They had some hittable pitches’ and did nothing with them. Posada called a great game, he didn’t get cute when there were times I know Cervelli would have. A couple of pitches Posada did not frame well, but outside of that he called a great game.

The only point of debate between myself and the other 11 people watching with me had to do with the 8th inning and who should start. I was in favor of taking Hughes out while some of the people (it was probably 3 for taking him out, 4-5 for leaving him in and the others just enjoying the game or enjoying our spirited debate 

My take was a simple one. I have Rivera waiting if needed, we have a 6 run lead and Hughes has not pitched into the 8th inning all year and the last thing I want to do is extend him even more than we are already (remember he is over his innings limit). I don’t want this to be construed as taking the “foot off the throat” or anything even remotely like what Torre did against Boston in game 4 in 2004. In fact, if the score was close I might have pushed Hughes a little more until he let a batter on, but Pitching Wood (who has been excellent) for the 8th and Rivera in the 9th is going with your best and I have no issue with it. Of course after Wood had no command the 2nd guessers didn’t like it. The part I didn’t get (and I have no clue what Girardi was thinking) was why he didn’t go to Logan to face Mauer and then Kubel? He waited for Wood to walk Mauer before letting Logan face 1 lefty? This is simply stupid. But fortunately Logan did his job and then Robertson did his job as well to get us out of any further trouble. Nice job guys… and then it was only time to crank Enter Sandman and watch the Genius Maker take us take us to the “final four.” Rivera has now pitched in 91 postseason games throwing 136.2 innings (about 2 seasons worth) and has only lost ONE game. He has blown a few saves but only once did he lose the game for us and not give us a chance. Of course that was game 7 against Arizona and it took his own error and a broken bat hit with a drawn in infield to make that happen. He is The Genius Maker!!!! Enjoy every pitch he throws as you are watching the best ever!!!

We now have to wait all the way until next Friday to play the winner of the TB/Texas series, but at least it went 5 as both Price and Lee will go. I have no idea why we go from Tuesday until Friday between the two series…again just makes no sense at all and we have to wait 6 days to play the most important game of the year when the most days off you have all year are half that amount??? Common sense is just lost. The games should start on Thursday at the latest and of course game 5 should be played tomorrow (Monday) instead of Tuesday and then I would be starting the new series on Wednesday.

I will wait until the winner to analyze the opponent…but after we won I was asked who I wanted to play and my answer was I wanted the series to go 5 and then probably Texas. My main reason was that Texas would have lost 2 of their last 3 and I would rather that than TB winning 3 in a row going into our series…as for the teams themselves, they each represent a formidable opponent and I honestly don’t have a preference.

Series Date Network Game Time (ET)
Game 1 - NYY @ TB/TEX Friday, October 15 TBS TBA
Game 2 - NYY @ TB/TEX Saturday, October 16 TBS TBA
Game 3 - TB/TEX @ NYY Monday, October 18 TBS TBA
Game 4 - TB/TEX @ NYY Tuesday, October 19 TBS TBA
Game 5* - TB/TEX @ NYY Wednesday, October 20 TBS TBA
Game 6* - NYY @ TB/TEX Friday, October 22 TBS TBA
Game 7* - NYY @ TB/TEX Saturday, October 23 TBS TBA

3 down 8 to go!

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