Wang Lifts Yankee Hopes

This game showed why Chien-Ming Wang is a legit ace: 8 innings, 1 earned, 5 hits, 2 walks, 6 Ks and a big W.

This was the first of many must-win games the Yanks will face in the final 5 weeks of the season. Too bad the Wanger can't take the hill for all of them.

The offense started early against Bonderman, then finished him off with a four-run flurry in the top of the sixth. Melky's bases-clearing triple put the game out of reach.

Throughout the game, Al Leiter (who may still have been suffering the effects of last night's marathon rain delay, followed by the marathon game), illustrated how badly statistics can be misinterpreted, and misunderstood. Honestly, it wasn't his fault, he didn't do the research, some flunky at YES did. This is what happens when statistics are examined without context.

Leiter: "Wang's ERA from the windup is 0.53. That's amazing. When he pitches from the stretch, it balloons to 16.48."

This is one of those stats that sounds amazing, until you spend two seconds thinking about it. The only time you pitch from the windup is when there is no one on base (some pitchers pitch from the wind-up with a man on third, in certain situations, Wang is not one of them). Hence, the only way you can allow an earned run from the windup is to give up a solo home run. Basically, a 0.53 ERA from the windup means Wang gives up a solo bomb to about 1 in every 54 batters he faces with no one on. I would think that every pitcher in the league has an ERA several multiples higher from the stretch, that's the nature of the game. This split tells us absolutely nothing.

A more telling metric would've been batting average against from the wind and from the stretch.

Player of The Game: Wang.

The Sox destroyed the Chicago, again, the deficit in the East remains 6.5 games. Seattle lost to the Rangers, so the Yanks move to within 2 games of the Wild Card.

Phil Hughes takes the hill tomorrow, and I'm expecting a strong, strong outing from him. It's time to start a new winning streak.