Here on the Mr. Bill Show, there is good news!
Last night, your New York Yankees tied a major-league record: it was their 11th straight game of their playoffs decided by 3 or fewer runs. Only the Philadelphia Phillies, in winning the World Series in 1980, have managed this, winning an insanely entertaining series against the Astros, then topping the Royals.
Hey, lots of narrow losses! We're getting close!
Another, more damning stat, gleaned from the Estimable Keefe: the Yankees have not beaten a team that is not from the woeful AL Central since our white-knuckle, skin-of-our-teeth victory over the Baltimore Orioles, in the 2012 ALDS.
A weird sort of stat from me: the Yanks have now lost a franchise-record, 8 consecutive games in their last playoff series of a season.
That is, in this World Series they've lost 2 straight. In 2022—their last playoff appearance—they lost 4 straight to Houston. In 2021 they lost their single, Wild Card game to Boston, and in the 2020 they lost the last game of their Covid ALDS to Tampa Bay.
8 straight losses in their last round.
They have become baseball's greatest living example of the Peter Principle.
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6 comments:
Will the Yankees tie a record for leaving runners on base in the post season?
I had to check out what the Peter Principle was, and having done so, wholeheartedly agree with you, Hoss. Amen!
Yanks are setting woeful, inglorious, dubious, pitiful records left and right. The walk off grand slam by Freddie Freeman was a record: no one had ever walked off a World Series game with a grand slam before.
Gotta think that there will be more incredibly stupid records set by the Yankees in this World Series. Maybe they'll hit into 9 double plays in Game 3. Maybe they'll get no-hit in Game 3 and in Game 4, a back to back blanking. Maybe they'll hit into three triple plays in Game 4. Or maybe they'll give up 45 runs in Game 3 and 95 runs in Game 4. Maybe they'll strike out 27 times in Game 3, with all 9 innings "immaculate innings" (3 strikeouts on 9 pitches). None of these things would surprise me in the least. If it's a stupid or bad record, Boone's teams are capable of achieving anything.
BTW I don't know that anyone has mentioned this, but in Game 1's disastrous 10th inning, the Yanks had the 3-2 lead, so even after the Vertigo flip flop into the stands, and the base runners being awarded 2nd and 3rd, they would have survived to play the 11th EVEN IF THE TYING RUN HAD SCORED. As long as the winning run didn't score, that was what mattered. So that was a tough situation, but Boone managed it like he absolutely had to get Ohtani and Freeman out. Like that was the only way out of it. Like it was a tie game and the winning run was on 3rd base.
Cortes actually did a good job to get Ohtani to pop out into the stands with the Vertigo flip flop. Now, with two outs, they might as well pitch to Betts, with a base open. That would give them some wriggle room. Let's says Betts ended up drawing a walk or getting hit by the pitch, then bases loaded for Freeman with two outs. So then Cortes has to pitch ultra carefully to Freeman. Even if he walks Freeman and the Dodgers tie the game, Yankees can still get to the 11th inning as long as Cortes gets the next hitter. But Cortes pitched to Freeman like it was a tie game, went after him immediately with a fastball mid in. Why? That was odd, to say the least. The right call there would have been to throw mostly junk low and away, make him get himself out. If he walks and ties the game, you can still go after the next hitter. It was completely unnecessary to bring in Cortes. And it was even more unnecessary for Cortes to pitch aggressively to Freeman. (You'd think our vaunted pitching coach would've reminded Cortes of all this with a mound visit.) That's all Baseball 101. But the Yankees have been re-inventing the wheel almost every game this year, so I'm not surprised in the least as to what happened next.
Was the Cortes thing a good statistical matchup? Because it wasn't a good commonsense matchup and those two methodologies are often at odds with each other.
I would say Cortes vs Ohtani was a good statistical matchup (Ohtani 2 for 12 against Cortes). Ohtani was 1 for 4 against Hill.
Freeman was 1 for 3 against Cortes and 3 for 7 with a HR against Hill.
Notably, Mookie Betts was 0 for 5 against Cortes and 2 for 5 with a HR against Hill.
But you can take all those stats and throw 'em out the window because Cortes needed at least a couple of appearances to get back into rhythm. He had only thrown tune up sessions to Yankee hitters. Those sessions were probably of the stand still and take type - the hitter merely stands there and doesn't swing the bat. Just to get the pitcher used to throwing to hitters.
It didn't even need to be Hill. Boone had other options as well. Cortes needed to work off rust. He shouldn't have been used except in blowout games either way. Instead, they should've used Cortes in Game 2 to mop up after Rodon. Of course, they didn't, and they burned the entire bullpen in Game 2. Yankee Wonderland.
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