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Saturday, In The Park: Sox-Yanks Gamer

Here’s your thread to comment on all your Sox-Yanks gamer action, along with any other observations on this fine afternoon. Dice-K and CC. Sounds like a band one could dance to. Comment away.

Boston
Ellsbury CF
Pedroia 2B
Martinez C
Youkilis 1B
Lowell 3B
Ortiz DH
Baldelli RF
Lowrie SS
Anderson LF

New York
Jeter SS
Damon LF
Teixeira 1B
Rodriguez 3B
Matsui DH
Swisher RF
Cano 2B
Cabrera CF
Molina C

53 replies on “Saturday, In The Park: Sox-Yanks Gamer”

This postseason sure will be interesting without arms behind the plate for the Red Sox. That would have been a double-play if it weren’t for Damon’s steal.

The Yankee hitting coach seems to have told the team to aim for the pitcher… Jeebus, DiceK has taken two already.

Interesting umpiring…A-Rod starts to take 1st on what he (rightly) thought was a walk (the umpire didn’t call strike three right away), and interference is called on A-Rod while Teixeira tries to steal, and he’s out as well.
That’s probably the only way Boston is going to get a caught stealing.

Man, it’s going to be fun seeing the wheels come off in October for Dice-K. Get all that good fortune out now.

Man, it’s going to be fun seeing the wheels come off in October for Dice-K. Get all that good fortune out now.
It has happened often enough that I think it goes a little beyond just good fortune.

Huh? His post first post season was not fantastic, but also not horrible. His 2nd last year was quite good. If you want to talk about less-than-stellar postseason resumes, look at the guy the Yankees have starting today.

Ah well, it was bound to happen eventually.
On that topic, certainly not saying Sabathia isn’t a quality pitcher — he is, every year, a cy-young caliber starter. What he has never been is good in the post season. He has very reliably broken down. We will see what happens this year.

“He has very reliably broken down.”
This could be largely due to the fact that the two post-seasons he has appeared in, his team rode him hard in september to make the playoffs. The yanks have had the luxury of not having to do so this year. Regardless, would either of you rather have DiceK going in game 1 of the ALCS than CC? I think not.

He never has Andrew, except for maybe pitching a lot of innings, which to be honest is a pretty weak excuse for a professional baseball player with many years of experience.

ethan- it always turns into a small sample size debate. to me, if the samples are consistent you have enough to draw conclusions.

Ethan, CC made multiple appearances in a row on 3 days rest last september…no matter if he is an experienced professional athlete, this effects a players performance. I really dont think this point can be argued.

And I don’t recall Cleveland riding him particularly hard at the end of the season in ’07, though I didn’t exactly follow them closely.
Any post season resume is going to be by definition a small sample size, but after a while patterns develop.

Except it hasn’t exactly been a ‘while’.
And yes, patterns develop. A pitcher pitches 240 innings (31 more than he ever had done before) and has nothing left at the end. A pitcher pitches on 3 days rest 5 times in a row (something I don’t think any pitcher has done in the last 20 years) and has nothing left at the end. Not really weak excuses at all.
And still, even if he has one poor start this year, en route to the Yankees getting swept in the first round, it won’t be a pattern, because it will be one start. As we saw with Lester yesterday, you can just not have it for one start. Although I will say that even when Sabathia doesn’t have it, he still can have a strong start.

Well, if you can snark and say Matsuzaka has a less-than-stellar post season resume based on two fairly good post seasons, I think it is fair for me to say that Sabathia has a less than stellar post season resume based on him actually having two less than stellar post seasons.
Either way, he is dealing today, and that 1 run will probably be enough to win.

dice-k really hasn’t been that bad either. the d has let him down at times and he’s nibbled a bit, but here he is still pitching into the 7th. seems like a solid 4th starter headed to oct.
it’ll be sweet to see dice-k’s wheels get tightened up during the playoffs.

Okay, and I can respond with very legitimate reasons for those failures, just like Sox fans do for Beckett when his Game 2 start singlehandedly sunk the Red Sox’s chances at another World Series.

Speaking of postseason resumes, if you really do trust them implicitly, you don’t want this guy going anywhere near the mound in October.

I do not trust post season resumes implicitly. You are the one who brought them up.
And Wagner has been good, but has slipped a little bit lately after his first few stellar outings. Is he even eligible for the post season roster?

He’d be an interesting ace, only throwing one inning at a time…
I think you missed the point of the comment.
Anyway, kind of saw this coming. Hopefully Paul Byrd will somehow manage to stop the Yankees from clinching tomorrow.

I think you missed the point of mine. No one actually thinks postseason numbers in small samples are all that meaningful.

I think you missed the point of mine. No one actually thinks postseason numbers in small samples are all that meaningful.
Then whey did you farcically bring up Matsuzaka’s post season resume? Apparently you think they are meaningful. Backtracking much?

You fail Mr. Wagner, you fail. Oh well. Weird how the Sox’s bullpen has just completely fallen to shambles in the last couple weeks.

I was simply (accurately) projecting your thought processes on October small sample sizes, and wondered why you could ignore Matsuzaka’s poor numbers, but deem Sabathia’s meaningful.
I, for one, don’t deem any small samples all that meaningful, and have never stated anything to the contrary.

The point is — Matsuzaka does not have poor numbers in the post season. They are not fabulous, but they are not bad. You brought them up, asking snarkily if it is ok to ignore them. I said *if* you are going to bring his post season resume into question, then take a look at Sabathia’s. You seem to take umbrage with doing that when you are the one who brought it up in the first place.
And by “Never stated anything to the contrary” do you mean except for what you said a few minutes ago? Unless you didn’t really mean what you said.

Pretty amazing how thing have completely turned around between these two teams since the beginning of the year. The Sox can’t buy a win against the Yankees anymore.
Small moral victory with Martinez continuing his hitting streak. Anyway, dinner time now. It’s been entertaining.

In the car all day so missed the game other than cell-phone updates. Will FF through the dvr’ed game tonight but it seems CC’s incredible 2nd half continues as does Dice-K’s crazy knack for stacking the bases without giving up runs. I can understand the argument that he has been doing that for so long that it can’t be explained away as luck, but can an SF who follows closely explain what it is about? Does he lose focus and then bear down when he needs to? Does he nibble a lot to try to get calls or bad swings and in those cases where he gets walks instead he stops the nibbling and throws better strikes? And if the latter, is there a theory why he hasn’t been able to throw that way more from the start of games and innings? These are not loaded questions. I’ve barely watched the guy pitch and I am curious. Also curious if the doing-it-for-so-long argument could equally apply to pre-njury Wang, who some people described as walking BABIP-luck ready to collapse, but who nonethelss kept it up for 2 full seasons.

IH, Wang had a different profile. It wasn’t as if his BABIP rates were unusual. Last year, on the other hand, Matsuzaka’s BABIP last season was “unsustainably” low. The issue with Wang is that he had done an incredibly good job of run prevention without striking out anyone. Other than his k rate, his peripherals were good. He had good k-rates, he suppressed slugging numbers, and, of course, was incredibly effective at getting the ground ball. But anecdotally speaking, I remember Wang not to be a particularly effective pitcher with men on base. At the very least, he was a little worse (if not a lot worse) when men were on base than when than when they weren’t. Dice-K seems the opposite type of pitcher in a lot of ways. He has been incredible with men on base. He can strike out guys. Just from watching him, it seems that he’s a nibbler. Not that Javier Vazquez nibbles, but he reminds me of him anyway because of how many different pitches he can use. Matsuzaka seems to like to experiment with a lot of different pitches and, perhaps, he does this at the expense of efficiency. Just a theory, but he seems to have command of a few pitches and less command of others, but he’ll use all of them, especially when the bases are empty or there are no runners in scoring position. I guess I’m wondering if he is too “fancy” out there at times.

“…Red Sox making a strong push for the division title with Baldelli in right, Lowrie at short stop and Brian Anderson in left. Yankees counter with their top guns….”
best argument i’ve heard in a long time for not having a wild card…

Sucks losing, but I find that 20 minutes after, I am fairly apathetic about it with the wild card close to locked up. I’ll be annoyed if the Yanks clinch tomorrow, but still pretty over it a bit after the fact. Won’t stop me from yelling during the actual game.

“Other than his k rate, his peripherals were good. He had good k-rates,”
Didn’t mean to write he had good k-rates obviously.

“best argument i’ve heard in a long time for not having a wild card…”
Not sure if I detect irony in your comment, dc, but while I can be sarcastic about the Red Sox lineup and the “big push” they’re making, I can also supply arguments for having a wildcard:
As of right now:
Red Sox 91 wins with 8 games to play
Tigers 83 wins with 8 games to play
So the Red Sox very likely will finish with a better record than the Central division champs. Right now they’re also one game ahead of the Angels, giving them the 2nd best record in the AL though they play in what is supposedly the league’s toughest division. (And, not that it matters, the only NL team that has won more games than the Red Sox at this moment is the Dodgers with 93 wins.)
I’m sure there must be better arguments against the wildcard than a play-off bound team not fielding its strongest lineup late in the season in a game against the division leader – much as I dislike that.
And it certainly was not fun seeing Chris Woodward in there late in the game.

not so much irony as it was me being a smart-ass about the wild card again…frankly, you give the best argument of all for having a wild card in a multi-divisional lineup: it allows the inclusion of a team superior to divisional winners outside of its own division, that has the misfortune, for this particular year anyway, of being in a division with a team that has the best record in baseball…the red sox absolutely belong in the playoffs, especially if the tigers are in…it shows how the game has changed is all…i’m guessing the sox approach these last games differently if they have no wild card…i guess the only way is to go back to the old single division per league lineup with the top 2 teams going to the world series, and that’s it…but, what about the tv money, the joy of staying up into the wee hours of the morning so they can squeeze in more commercials after the prime time pre-game, all the mediocre teams and players added by expansion, the additional playoff races, the multi-divisional format and wild-card creating additional layers of playoff excitement allowing players to pad their “post season” stats?….i can’t help it, i’m a purist…but i like the dh…you’ll have to excuse me now while my head explodes from that contradiction…actually, the old way is not the only way…i’d favor a system that severely disadvantages the wild card, and the team with the worst division record…like, no home games in the opening round…works in football…it wouldn’t make the last games more meaningful for the sox this year, but it might make a difference some years…

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