A recap stressing brevity...
- Ian Kennedy was horrible tonight. I'm not alarmed for two reasons:
- His problem was control. Control is his strong suit. He'll be back to painting corners eventually, let's just hope it doesn't take too long.
- He was mercilessly squeezed by home plate ump Doug Eddings. Eddings is officially a douche.
- Hawkins and Farnsworth had a nice battle for worst reliever honors.
- Hideki Matsui cannot play left field. With Melky serving his reduced two-game suspension tomorrow will be another display of his defensive ineptitude.
- Jeter got to a ball up the middle that he wouldn't have last year, then booted it. Maybe a good sign?
- Giving up 13 runs to the Rays isn't as embarrassing as it used to be...
- Only scoring 4 runs against Andy Sonnanstine, Dan Wheeler, Trever Miller and Scott Dohmann is plenty embarrassing.
- Joe Girardi taking a sick day with less than one week on the job = unacceptable. Suck it up.
I'll be in attendance tomorrow along with Mike from
Green Pinstripes to see the Yanks shake this one off. Pettitte needs to give the Yanks some depth, even with a limited pitch count to work with. One game of 5 innings plus from your pen you can rebound from. Two in a row could become a problem.
Player of The Game: Jonathan Albaladejo. 2.2 innings of clutch work out of the pen early in the game.
Team Record: 2-2
Damon's Broken Bats: 1 tonight, 4 on the season.
I think Kennedy's struggles were more a result of getting squeezed than having problems with his control. I mean, he was near the corners all game, he just wasnt getting any calls. And since he wasnt getting the calls, he had to move his pitches further into the strike zone and he got knocked around. He doesnt have blow-you-away stuff, so if he's not getting calls on the corners, he's going to struggle.
Because I'm a masochist, I'm watching the game again on my DVR...and I can see Kennedy was near the strike zone all night.
Case in point: He walked Iwamura on a full count to start the game, and two of the four balls were VERY close to being strikes, including the 2-2 pitch.
And then there was the at-bat that knocked Kennedy out of the game, the bases loaded AB to Riggins, the back-up catcher. Ball 1 was clearly outside, then he got squeezed on the 1-0 pitch, then Riggins fouled off a pitch, then he got BADLY squeezed on the 2-1 pitch, and with the bases loaded of course he had to throw a fastball down the middle to not walk in a run. But if it had been a 2-2 count, he would have been in much better shape
As for Latroy, if Damon was in left he gets out of the inning having only given up the homerun to Floyd. Damon would have caught the flyball to left that Hinske hit, then the next batter got on-base on a soft grounder in the hole, then three consecutive soft-hit bloop singles
Hawkins sucks, but he wasnt nearly as bad as his stat line would suggest
I was very angry when Kennedy was in there. You're right, the squeezing was ridiculous. I didn't harp on it because that's going to happen sometimes. He needs to find a way to fight through it. One thing he didn't do was start yelling at the ump like a certain other starter in the rotation would have. I guess that's a good sign.
Nice headline!
joe G has a 103+ fever!! ease up on him brian lol