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The Coin Keeps Ending Up Heads: Yanks-Sox Gamer I

Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" begins with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins ninety-two flips in a row. So consider us Yanks fans, Rosencrantz, and Sox fans, Guildenstern. And here's to the absurdity of unlikely events!

Hughes versus Lackey. It will probably be a pitcher's duel.

Enjoy!

329 replies on “The Coin Keeps Ending Up Heads: Yanks-Sox Gamer I”

I get tired of the schedule basically always having the season start and end with the Yankees. I know why they do it, but it’s a little ridiculous to do it every year. I think it’s really hurt the intensity of the rivalry. There’s only so many times you can begin and end the season against your “feared and hated rivals” and still get yourself as pumped for it.

Well, nothing like putting pressure on an offense that has struggled to score runs for the past week. Let’s see how Crawford likes the leadoff spot.

Thought Ortiz had a wallball there for a second. Not quite enough. Still, 2-1 is better than 2-0. Now Lackey needs to get the ball an inch more over the plate, and he’ll be doing pretty well.

Crawford looked bad in his first opportunity with the Wall, but Granderson was gonna make it to second, regardless.
The Sox didn’t want to do anything more than a minor-league contract, James.

I disagree, Andrew. The question with Pedroia’s homer was whether it had the height. The Wall came closer to taking away than giving on that one, I think.

I have always maintained that it was a huge mistake by the Red Sox to not go harder after Martin. That was their one real area of need and they went the ‘clever’ route.

I think the second one is on Crawford. He was positioned too shallow. It turns out the Sox may be able to get some use out of his range out there after all…

Agreed twice there, Paul. The second one was on Crawford. The first though could have been a close play if he played it well. Instead it could have become a triple.
The difference between home and away doubles last year’s Sox gave up fascinates me. Is that the field itself (e.g, balls off the wall) or balls misplayed? Or both?

They’re gonna have to bash him right now ’cause Lackey’s giving up at least three more.
Bases loaded, no outs. Cash…the f***…in.

The difference between home and away doubles last year’s Sox gave up fascinates me. Is that the field itself (e.g, balls off the wall) or balls misplayed? Or both?
My understanding is that the Wall turns a lot of home runs (and fly outs) into singles and doubles, so the park effects for homers end up being very pitcher-friendly, but Fenway allows tons of doubles and overall is good for hitters.
Scutaro with a big bases-loaded opportunity here. I’d feel better with Lowrie up, frankly.

Another weak grounder. Too weak for the DP, SO 1st and 3rd, two out.
A little frustrating that the Sox hit the ball hard until the bases are loaded. We need some two-out action from Pedey.

Granderson was all sorts of bad on that play. He fielded it awkwardly (did he get a bad break?) and sailed the throw, allowing Pedroia to get to second.

Wow, Hughes is a suckfest. Big surprise
James, neither guy is getting the corners, and neither guy is going to be good without it. They’re both being forced to throw the ball down the middle, which is bullshit.

Really surprised Pedroia 1. tried to score on a grounder to shallow left, and 2. was safe at the plate. Great slide. Martin somehow didn’t even touch him.

They shifted on A-Gon? Isn’t part of his game that he hits to all fields?
Divine, yes, but apparently he pulls ground balls more often. I suspect he’s going to take the hits as long as other teams are willing to give them to him. I doubt we’ll see much shifting by the All-Star break.
Ortiz drives home Gonzo for the 6-3 lead, and Youkilis is caught between second and third.

When do they send Hughes to the pen or to the minors? This is awful. He’s picked up the Javy Vazquez Virus – prone to induce crap stuff and long homers.

The pitch to Ortiz I thought looked really good GameDay says was juuuust off the plate. Except for that Ball 3 pitch to Gardner Lackey (and I) was sore about, this ump has been pretty consistent about not giving either pitcher anything off the plate.

Just got home – actually scheduled two meetings this afternoon just to avoid leaving work early and having to watch a train wreak, now I regret it, and the non-baseball loving people on my staff are hating me for it

Does that mean we get to see him take the loss in a no-hitter at some point this season? Really, I’m surprised we haven’t seen that already.

Well, technically, that was him in the second half of 2010. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have carried over.
Run for an out. I’ll take the trade.

Yeah, I figured they would have put Hughes out for one more inning, let him get some work in and try to figure out what’s going on. That’s more of a September decision than an April one.

Colon did well as a starter for the Red Sox. Ironically, he refused to move into the bullpen and fled to the Dominican when the Sox asked him to change his role for the playoffs.

“That’s more of a September decision than an April one.”
That’s more of a “He sucks” decision. I will be very surprised if he gets another start.

That’s more of a “He sucks” decision
I admit I’m not up on why Hughes went from being one of the best pitchers in the AL to merely average last season, but I’d think they’d want to give him at least one or two more starts before pulling the plug on this latest iteration of his career.

NESN finally showed a shot of the left-center field scoreboard. That’s impressive.
Gardner with the triple. I think Gonzalez got a piece of it and slowed it down.

I wish Lackey could just have one clean inning. The other team has scored in every inning, but one, that he’s thrown this year.
Are you kidding me? Just bring in Aceves at this point. This is horrible to watch.

Pitch was down and away. Jeter reached out and got it. Good hitting. You can see Lackey’s expression, somewhere between disbelief and aggravation.
And now Salty gives up the passed ball. Jeter to second.

In the dirt, hit off his glove and rolled away. He didn’t do a very good job of blocking it, I didn’t think, but then I’m never going to be a big-league catcher. :-)

Love how MLB.tv froze, then refreshed to a commercial. Had no idea if it was because the inning was over or there was a pitching change after Teixeira had launched a bomb (or some other similar bad scenario).

Pedroia has a beef with at least one of those two called strikes. Ump’s zone appears to be widening a little.
This reminds me of that game a few years ago where the Sox were creaming Darrell Rasner, then he broke his leg(?) and they were shut down the rest of the game by Kei Igawa.

“…Crawford’s wasted defense makes an appearance in left!…”
well, he is a bit of an upgrade from darnell mcdonald ;)
friend of mine wants to have a couple of beers after the game…he doesn’t know much about baseball…he knew the game started at 2 and wanted to know if it would be over by 4…hahahaha…i told him it wouldn’t even be half over by 4…i’m on track

I think we might need to invoke the ‘disregard Sox/Yankees matchups’. It always seems like anything can happen during these games, so it’s tough to make judgments based off of them.

Didn’t Lackey used to wear horrible glasses? Or was that Brendan Donnelly? Or both? Even if he didn’t I think he should start wearing a Groucho Marx schnozz, or something ridiculous, if only to throw the batters off.

Youk walks! The perfect relief outing is over!
So do we see Rafael Soriano later on, even though he’s pitched in 3 of the last 4 games for the Yanks? He is the “8th inning guy”, after all.

My completely uninformed take on Salty is that I like his swing a lot. I have no idea if he is or will be even half a major league player, but I love his swing.

Salty looks like he has a opposite field swing, maybe that is why Theo signed him, to scrape balls off the wall like that one, but for all I know he is a dead pull hitter and swung late on that pitch

Aceves is a sloooooow worker with a runner on base … joining pretty much every other pitcher on the Red Sox staff. Is it a rule or something?

The Sox are being too impatient against colon, I think. He’s not nearly as good out of the stretch. Just make him throw pitches and try to work a walk. Crawford especially went up there hacking.

“…actually took a step and a half before falling down…”
that’s all that was required…played perfectly by the rangeless one ;) surely will be one of espn’s top 10…francona’s filling out his gold glove ballot after this inning ;)

Huh, I’m watching the NESN broadcast through MLB.tv and didn’t see ’em.
Interesting. So am I, and I did. :-)
I thought Aceves would go another inning. Not wild about gambling with another reliever after a decent showing from Ace.

This’ll be one of those games, no matter the outcome, that both starters deservedly should have had a loss attached to them, but don’t.

Hard to get the 3-6-3 DP when you have a lefty at first. Gonzo needed an extra second to turn and throw, which meant Scutaro had to avoid the slide before throwing it back. Missed Cano by a step.

Manny Ramirez just announced his retirement…MLB basball confirming that they have recieved the intent from Ramirez today.
Just in time before coming in on Monday, if you ask me!

MLB says that MLB recently notified Manny Ramirez that he failed another drug test, thus causing Manny to announce his retirement.
Wow.

Wow. Manny had a pretty horrible start to his season, so I guess it’s not a total surprise. But he had a decent enough year last year. Big blow for the Rays, as it removes any hope of getting his bat back.

“Rather than continue with the suspension process, Manny has elected to retire from the sport of baseball today, effective 2PM.

I think, if that’s true, it definitely destroys his HOF chances. Whether that’s right or wrong I’ll leave to another thread, but it seems that’s how the voters are going.
Wow, NICE catch by Crawford right against the side wall down the LF line. That’s a tough play to make and hold on to.

It looked plenty tough. I know just from throwing the ball up in the air in my driveway when I was a kid, you’re looking up, the wall is next to you, it totally messes up your balance and everything.

It’s “understandable” to fail a drug test once. It’s happened to a lot of players, and whether it’s right or wrong it at least makes sense given the environment of the last 10 years. But getting caught, and then CONTINUING to do them? That’s pretty absurd, and unforgivable.

My thought is that until we kick out Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Willie Mays and the rest of the PED users from the 1970s, there’s no cause to keep the PED users from the 2000s out.

Time for Papi to do the same damn thing as soon as they shift. And every lefty in the lineup until someone makes them pay for it.

I guess I’m not going to get it. To the eighth. I’d love to see Bard rediscover that crazy 100mph “slider” he threw to Swisher that one time.

I think Bard can hit 100mph anytime he wants but he can’t control it as well as 96 or 97. He HAS to throw strikes with his fastball to even think of the slider or changeup, which is then, sick.

I think Bard’s velocity is just taking a little to warm up. If he’s at 96 now, he’ll be able to sit at 98 in a couple weeks, I’d guess.

“…My thought is that until we kick out Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Willie Mays and the rest of the PED users from the 1970s…”
dang…really paul?…like you said, we can save it for another thread, but what proof do we have about those guys?…i guess i’ve heard all the rumors about speed, but without testing how do we know who was and who wasn’t?…for that matter, even with testing how do we know?…

.for that matter, even with testing how do we know?…
My point exactly. I’m not arguing amphetamine users should be removed, even if we could know exactly who used and who didn’t. I’m arguing that the Hall has a long history of inducting known and suspected cheaters, from amphetamine and steroid users to ball scuffers and spit ballers.
Nice inning from Bard.

this game feels like it’s over…i’m out, but i’m not giving up on the season…you sox fans get your brooms ready…leave it to the yankees pitching to be the streak breakers…sf will owe me a beer…he didn’t say he accepted the bet, but by not rejecting it, he tacitly accepted it, right?

Gosh, what a relief. Take tomorrow now and win the series. Then win the next series. Sweeps not entirely necessary, just a whole lot of series wins. Great to get this first one, I can’t imagine the sentiments had they gone to 0-7. Phew.
(hey Paul, get on those historical 1-6 starts, pronto!)

Hopefully we’re done hearing about how broken the Sox are.
Despite my pessimism, it wasn’t over the makeup of the Sox (or their “brokenness”). It was about the task they were burdening themselves with. They are still burdened. Today’s a huge relief, though.

One down. Two to go.
I’ll be at the game tomorrow for Buchholz. Hopefully my experience is better than Paul’s adventure in Texas.
I’m out.

Not the most reassuring start to Phil Hughes’ season. Was stuck on a boat for the entire game. Am glad I missed it and have no intention of watching the recording. Sad to see the Sox get off the schneid. Happy to see friendly SFs get off the ledge. Come on Yanks, end their winning streak at 1.

Twitter posts by Buster and Bradford talking about how Theo gave a pre-game speech to the team. Bard said it was like the speech in Rudy and Ortiz said he never heard Theo talk that way.

Finally. Now that the monkey is off the back some of the players might stop forcing things.
Now if only we can get a solid game from a starter AND score some runs at the same time…

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