The Night That Could Have Been

You know that when Jon Lester takes the mound, especially against the Yankees, he's going to dazzle. He certainly didn't disappoint. He struck out 7 Bombers, 5 of them of the backwards K variety. While Andy Pettite was not as dominating as the young lefty he did match him pitch for pitch through 7 innings. I thought Lester's performance was going to be all for naught when he threw a fastball over the heart of the plate to Alex Rodriguez, who prior to the HR was hitting below .100 against Lester in his career.

On a side note, this series was monumental for the Yankee 3^rd baseman. Most of you have probably heard that when you go to a team you are not necessarily enshrined in the team lore until you have proven infallible against an arch enemy or coming up big in the playoffs (ie JD Drew). While JD Drew is mired in a funk and not worth half of the salary that he's getting paid, Alex Rodriguez however is coming up big not just by hitting but just his presence hitting behind Teixeira is making the entire team better. Tex + A-Rod=Manny + Papi or Gherig + Ruth. Maybe a little premature but starting to look that way.

For an offense that was reminiscent of Shaq's free-throw shooting ability for 31 innings they needed a lift. In Step: Victor Martinez. Before we get into what V-mart did I have a question. What the hell is Joe Girardi thinking throwing Phil Coke against anyone when he has the newly emerged Phil Hughes in his bullpen? Back to the action. Victor is clearly wanting a fastball. How do I know this? For the first three pitches ALL CURVEBALLS he's swinging out of his ass and ahead of all of them. Phil Joke did him a favor and tossed him a cookie on the inner third and Victor creased the ball and put it out into the grandstand in left.

This may have woken up the sleeping giant that is the Red Sox offense, but this lead lasted about as long as Paris Hilton's clothes at a P Diddy party. In Step: Daniel Bard. What should have been the major sub plot of this 2009 season, Bard definitely looked like a rookie on this night. While it is infuriating that a batter who swings with one-arm can turn around and hit a 98 mph fastball. The curve ball to Teixeira was a bad decision. Yes hindsight is 20/20 and his defense is palatable (He hadn't thrown back to back breaking balls all season) but look back to the marathon 15 inning Friday affair. You blew him away with a 99mph fastball to which Sexy Texy mouthed, "WOW" when he chased a fastball up and away. You HAVE to come back with the cheese there. Not the easy cheese you need to pump it in there at triple digits and say, "Hit this."

At the conclusion of the inning, the sox were down 5-2 and didn't lead an entire FULL inning during the 4 game set, and were essentially 6.5 games back in the standings. But while looking into ELIAS Sports Bureau I found out that the Yankees have NEVER in their history blown a lead of 6 or more games, this season isn't over yet. It's August 10^th, and we still have 2 series left against each other not to mention we don't have ANY more West Coast Trips remaining. We still have a shot at the division. While we have to take this race 1 game at a time we are still tied for the lead in the wild card and we have a series against the other Wild Card leader Texas upcoming.

Some encouraging things (I realize they are few and far between) that I saw during this pivotal series.

1. Clay Buchholz is capable of throwing in a hostile environment and a big game. He not only gave us a chance to win but if we had ANY semblance of an offense we would have probably won that game.
   
2. Our Bullpen is still FANTASTIC. Although we lost all four of those games our bullpen was like The Rock in Walking Tall. Bad ass and you don't want to mess with them. EVEN MANNY DELCARMEN.
   
3. The Junichi Tazawa era is here and I for one am flabbergasted with how excited I am. I think my man crush has left Albert Pujols and I think has now started meandering over to J-Taz (one man crush per man, and yes J Taz is his new nickname.) He reminds me of an unpolished Tim Lincecum with less violence in his pitching motion. Don't look at that home run as a bad thing, it's one bad pitch and he's not a relieve he's a starter! He's starting on Tuesday and here's my synopsis on him. I think he's young enough to NOT hit that three year wall. He didn't pitch in Japan long enough to be on their regimen. I'm EXCITED.
   

That's about all I got for you guys. But we have the Tigers now and we swept them once, let's do it again.

Stay Tuned

Ryan