Hammer of God: "Yesterday, it happened. It finally happened..."

From commentator Hammer of God...

Yesterday, it happened, it finally happened! For the first time this year in seven games, by hitting Judge in the 2 slot, he came up in the 9th inning with two outs, nobody on as the tying run, a situation that wouldn't have happened if he'd batted #3, at least if you assume everything else stayed the same. Unfortunately, the intelligent Orioles gave Judge the unintentional intentional walk. The kind of thing that you rarely see the Yanks do with their closers ("hey, our closer is good enough to get anyone out! ..." Bang, zoom, game tied).

All of the things that we had talked about happened in this game.

In the first inning, DJ walked. Judge struck out. Rizzo singled. Of course I realize that Judge did not have his best game with the bat, and reversing Judge and Rizzo probably would've made no difference in the outcome. But the fact remains that, by hitting Judge #2, you gave up any chance of him hitting with two men on base in the 1st inning. (Plus, if DJ's on base percentage is .330, you're going to have Judge hitting in the 1st inning with nobody on base 67 percent of the games.)

In the 9th inning, the Oriole closer came out mowing everyone down with 100mph heat and wipeout stuff. With two outs, he (very smartly) pitches gingerly to Judge and gives him a free pass. Whereupon Judge becomes a quasi-leadoff man and swipes second base (cringe) and then takes third base on a wild pitch. But Rizzo popped out to end the game. You get the feeling that their only chance to tie the game was if there was another wild pitch.

So, if you think about it, Boone made the 1st inning less dangerous for the Orioles starting pitcher, by hitting Judge in the 2 slot. And I remind you that, as a road game, the score was 0-0 at that point. And then circumstances basically took the bat out of Judge's hands for the 9th inning, when they were trailing by a run. Even if the Orioles closer had pitched to him, though, that was a tall order, to have to hit a home run to tie the game. What are the chances of that? Yeah, it can happen, but it's kind of like a 1 in 100 shot. Not the kind of odds you want to play.

When I play chess, I'm the kind of guy who likes to go back and consider what would have happened if I'd made this move instead of that move. When I play poker, (I play only for fun, never for money), I like to look at the remaining pile after the hand is over, to see what would have happened if I'd asked for one more card or if I'd gone for this combination instead of that.

So, fans are always going to be armchair managers and go back and look at the what ifs. It's part of the fun of the game to think about what might happened if Boone had done this instead of that, or that instead of this, or the other thing instead of this or that.