Generally, I don't recap yesterday's game.
I mean, you already know what happened. Why dwell over a box score. This is a blog for black-belt Yankee fans - not beginners. Why relive the past?
That said, please permit me a moment.
If you missed the end of last night's game, you missed one of the most compelling Yankee scenes in this millennium. It played out on national TV, Fox Sports, as the prodigal son - Gerrit Cole - faced his old teammates in his old park. And at the risk of sounding like Alex Jones, everything - the nation, the world, the Yankee season! - seemed on the line.
I donno how 2021 will end, but no matter how it goes, last night deserves to be remembered. So, here it is...
We hit the bottom of the ninth with Gerrit Cole nursing a 1-0 lead, pitching a 2-hit masterpiece. He's thrown more than 110 pitches, his most all year. It's unclear who'll pitch the ninth, Cole or closer Aroldis Chapman, who's been warming.
Leading off will be Jose Altuve, a certified Yankee nightmare, whose history with Chapman remains a PTSD cancer. Nobody has forgotten Altuve's 2019 walkoff HR. In fact, Fox sideline analyst Ken Rosenthal states bluntly that the Yankees cannot subject Chapman - who's been horrible lately - to the ninth. But the Yankees don't have El Chapo warm up, unless they plan on using him.
Cole comes out, looking exhausted. He immediately gives up a humpback single to Altuve on a pitch out of the strike zone. That brings up three Astro hitters with batting averages above .300. (By the way, the Yankees have none.) Michael Brantley flies out to CF Brett Gardner, who flings the ball to second, as if Altuve intended to try for it. Yuli Gurriel fans on a ball in the dirt, a checked swing call, which catcher Kyle Higashioka somehow smothers. With two outs, Aaron Boone marches to the mound for a summit.
Boone appears to be trying to take the ball from Cole, who is seen shouting at the manager. The infield converges around them. The umpire comes out to break things up. Boone returns to the dugout, looking ashen, while Cole and Higashioka - battery mates since high school - discuss the next batter, the dangerous Yordan Alvarez.
Here's the win probability, according to the nameless wonks. Note that on the very last play of the game, after being behind for nine innings, Houston is suddenly favored to win.
With Cole's pitch count at 129, Alvarez strikes out on a high fastball. The Yankees celebrate. Boone looks like a reanimated corpse. No matter what happens today, they will have beaten Houston in their own park, and the Yankees will hit the all-star break with a winning record.
Moreover, they protected Chapman from a possible career-defining meltdown. Rosenthal was right: In El Chapo's current funk, there was no way they could let him face the top of Houston's order with a one-run lead. Boone would have squandered the gutsiest pitching performances in memory.
I know what you're thinking: What about Cory Kluber's no-hitter? Does this beat that game? Well, for me, last night was bigger, because...
1) Kluber finished at 101 pitches, far fewer than Cole.
2) Kluber had a 2-run lead, while every batter Cole faced was the potential tying run.
3) Kluber beat the lowly Texas Rangers, while Cole faced the NL West leaders.
4) Kluber's gem happened in May, while Cole's comes with the Yankee season seemingly on the brink.
So, there it is. Sorry, if you already knew what happened. I just wanted to relive it. Sometimes, as a fan, that's all we get.
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62 comments:
And Judge trolled all of Houston. Epic
And G Cole will leave his next start with forearm tightness
Instant Yankees classic. Haven’t seen that kind of throwback performance since David Cone was in pinstripes, and it brought to mind Mike Mussina telling Joe Torre to get back in the dugout once upon a time.
Celerino Sanchez beat me to it. Hope not, of course, but it'll happen. Or, best case scenario, a second half of 41/3 inning, 4.50 era Cole with John and Suzyn using a rich variety of euphemisms to say he's hurt. Still, nothing in sports beats a nine inning or near pitching performance. Purest athletic heroism. Wonderful to watch.
Certainly a great win, and it might have been our WS for 2021. I just hope Cole didn't blow a fuse in his arm.
No doubt the best Cole has pitched so far in a Yankee uniform. And maybe it was the best game of his career, a complete game shutout against a great hitting (and cheating) team in their own home park.
For the most part, his fastball command was excellent. And pitch selection was much better than in the Mets game, although there were a couple of at-bats where I thought he could have saved some pitches.
The other thing I got out of this game is that our offense sucks. It shouldn't have been a 1-0 game in the 9th. On a night where Cole pitched his best, there was absolutely no margin for error. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in our ability to win a playoff game or any tight game down the stretch run. Meaning, what happens in a game like that when we get a typical start from one of our pitchers? Yep, you'll get the usual excuses from Yankee PR and another quick exit.
The Hammer of God
Last night's game is why I watch sports.
Sure there could be consequences down the line but after sitting through what feels like hundreds of hours of bad, uninspiring baseball this year, it was great to care, great to be riveted, great to see a Yankee with passion and who won't accept losing.
Great to see Boone and his milquetoast demeanor rejected by a true warrior.
At the end of the game I applauded. It's been a long time.
Doug K.
Did you see the Aaron Judge home run, as he was rounding third base, the jersey grab with both hands a la Jose Altuve? Cute, and I'm glad he did it.
Come to think of it, this whole series with the give-away every game, with the replica ALCS championship trophy on Friday, the replica ALCS championship ring on Saturday, and the Altuve jersey on Sunday, I think that's another slap in the face insult. So they won by cheating (and I'm sure they were cheating in 2019) and now they've actually got the gall to celebrate it in front of us. I thought it's classless, tasteless, and disgusting. It's a celebration of cheating. "We cheated ... but so what ... we won ... and you lost ... we beat you guys ... because you guys were too stupid to cheat ... we're so clever ... oh how clever of us!"
The Hammer of God
Did you see the Luke Voit knockdown? I think it was in the 8th inning. He gets decked by pitch that would have hit him square in the eye if he hadn't hit the deck.
And then Cole, in the bottom of the 8th, responded by throwing one over the head of the first hitter. But it didn't knock him down though.
So we've yet to even it up. If it's a lop sided game either way today, I say we deck either Altuve or Gurriel.
The Hammer of God
I'm absolutely with Doug on this, probably the first time this season that I've applauded at the end of a game! Cole had something to prove, to the world, to us, and to himself, and he fucking did it. There will most likely be consequences physically (he was also recovering from an illness), but for one evening in 2021, I was filled with pure pride for a Yankee!
And YES YES YES, Judge's trolling of Altuve must become routine for every homer hit against Houston, for eternity,,,, never ever ever forget!
The Rastros have not recorded a run in this series yet...18 innings of shutout hitting.
The universe is punishing the Rastros for having 3 giveaways this weekend to celebrate the 2019 AL Championship Houston won against NY while the Yanks are in town.
Back in 1994 while I was living in Manhattan, one morning, I went to Michael's Muffins in the Chelsea area. They had great muffins by the way. Reason I bring that up is because it was the first time I saw a tip cup. I said to myself at the time...WTF? Anyway, so next to the tip cup, someone put a small placard next to it saying..."Karma is a boomerang".
Yes...karma is a boomerang...
Ken,
I love that! (The HR trolling) I think it should be league wide! Every HR hit against the Astros by every team!
Doug K.
If Cole was in his second or third season I’d be concerned about that pitch count, but he’s logged 200+ innings going on nine years now. And I also think, given the short 2020 season, he’s a developed arm that can withstand a long outing - a really necessary long outing given another abysmal RISP failure and the prospect of Chapman lurking in the background.
I guess time will tell how his arm responds to what used to be common practice for starting pitchers, but was a BIG Yankees win (as they all are) and a sweep today would be very welcome.
Can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth that we would be emitting if Chapman has entered the game - him against Altuve?
There might actually be a glimmer of hope for this team with 80 games to play. But only a glimmer.
Ugh. This Sinclair pregame show is awful.
The trivia question ... What Yankee was the first reliever to win the AL Cy Young award?
The answer: Sparky Lee!
And it wasn't just a typo on the screen. The host then talked about how "Sparky Lee" helped the Yankees to 3 straight AL pennants and 2 World Series titles in the 1970s!
Aaargh! Hire hosts who actually have watched a game.
Cole will be fine. Don't be a Nervous Norvis.
The real bad news yesterday was that Miggy went on the IL and Lasagna went on the Covid "IL" and who do we replace them with? Abreu and Kriske.
Abreau and Kriske. We replace a position player and one of our best relievers with two ineffective relievers who shouldn't be throwing at the major league level.
Not Park, not a backup outfielder like Estevan who could at least spell Gardner for a game or two. Two losers in the pen, continuing our tradition of carrying a bloated number of pitchers, with several who can't get the Hebrew Home softball team out.
Why? What's the rationale? Is there any? Doesn't seem like it.
The problem with the YES announcers is Cone has to dumb himself down to keep the job and fit in, while O'Neill lives there naturally.
"Sometimes the life of a corps commander is worth no more than any other."
Gen. Winfield Hancock said that on the third day of Gettysburg, while leading the defense of Cemetery Ridge. Some of his aides worried he was too close to the shooting, on a day and in a war in which generals were shot down like so many carny targets. And sure enough, Hancock was wounded soon after, and carried from the battlefield (Spoiler alert: he lived.).
But his sentiment holds true. Sometimes—sometimes—you just gotta risk things in professional sports.
Dick Allen is right. Cole is not young, he's learned to regularly throw over 200 innings a season—and obviously, he had something to prove to himself as well as trying to pick up his teammates.
Good for him!
There is so much caution in the modern game—and yet, guys seem to get injured more frequently than ever. Is the problem really on the field, or in the weight room?
I know, I know. This wasn't the World Series, and I very much doubt that this Yankees team is going anywhere. But you don't root for a bunch of statistics. You root for flesh-and-blood athletes who you want to see show that they care from time to time. The whole, ramshackle structure of professional sports depends on that. Otherwise, we might as well be watching professional wrestling.
So I say hurrah for Cole, and hurrah for Aaron Judge. I say hurrah for Ma Boone, listening to his pitcher. I say hurrah for at least dipping a toe into the irrational and the wonderful.
Hear, hear, Hoss. You put your finger on it.
So the Astros have four guys named to the All Star team and none are going. They all need the rest because they're banged up, but it's not a good look.
Today's trivia question: how many All Stars aren't going to the game? I don't know the answer, but it seems like quite a few. Which means we're not going to see the actual All Stars, but a fair number of replacement players. And they wonder why viewership is down.
Incidentally, somebody on a previous thread brought up the example of Bob Turley being overused by Casey Stengel in the 1958 World Series, and never again being the same pitcher.
I dunno.
Let's review. In that Series, Turley got off to bad start in Game 2, and was pulled after only five batters, taking the loss in a 13-5 defeat.
He came back with the then-standard, three days rest and pitched a 7-0, complete-game shutout. Two days after that, Stengel brought him in to get the final out in a 4-3, 10-inning win that tied the series. Turley threw five pitches, and got Frank Torre to line out to second.
The next day, Game 7, Turley pitched 6 2/3 innings in relief of Don Larsen, allowing just two hits and one run, to close out the Braves.
It's certainly not the ideal way to use a pitcher, then or now—and Turley truly never was the same pitcher again, performing well in spots but landing constantly on the DL before he retired after the 1963 season.
Was it the World Series that wrecked him?
All in all, Turley threw 16 1/3 innings in the 7 games—hardly an overwhelming burden. More likely, the league-leading, 19 complete games he pitched in his Cy Young-winning, REGULAR season took its toll.
Bullet Bob was always susceptible to arm miseries, as he threw hard and walked a lot of batters. In his first season for the Yanks, 1955, he compiled a fine, 17-13, 3.06 season—then was laid up for much of the next season, when he went 8-4, 5.05 (though he nearly won the Series clincher that year). He came back to have a very strong 1957, and then his spectacular 1958 season.
He was not overworked at all by the standards of the time, only pitching over 200 innings twice in his 8 seasons with the Yankees. Stengel would sometimes keep him in the bullpen, as he did with a lot of his starters, which might have messed him up but which also might have extended his career.
In the end, I think it comes down to deciding what you want to risk for that one shining moment.
Was it worth it to cap a Cy Young season with a well-earned World Series MVP? I suspect that Bullet Bob, who in all played on 7 pennant winners and 4 world champions would've said so (and who made good money for the time).
How much longer would he have pitched, and how much better would it have got?
Good point.
Taillon, sadly, breaks the shutout skein. But if any one of the starters was going to do it, he's a logical choice. Worst hitter in the lineup, of course.
Thank you Hoss re. Cole, VERY well said my friend!!
Loco!!
No home run call from Sterling.
Hit did say, "He's ain't no Tiny Tim, that's for sure."
LOL! And we were right, The Master hadn't thought of the home run call, hahahahaha
It's Tim Locastro's world, we're just living in it.
Torres is really coming around.
Couldn't bring in the guy from third with no outs. Again.
Astoundingly awful at-bat from Gardy. He took two borderline pitches that looked like strikes. Then he took 3 more, a ball and two strikes, working the count to 3-2. Then he struck out on an outside pitch in the dirt.
Sigh.
Here's a crazy idea. Let Chapman start a game. If he walks guys and can't get outs, yank him and put in a fill-in starter, then use the pen. If he does well, let him go a couple innings before doing the same.
Bringing him in during the late innings when we're ahead--even way ahead--is dangerous. Having him start gives us a chance even if he sucks.
What is going on! What is all this then!? I ignore these fucktards for a weekend and suddenly they can beat a good team?? I DONT THINK SO!! I WILL NOT BE SUCKERED INTO THIS HORROR SHOW!! I WILL NOT!! THE YANKEES NEED TO GO BACKTOSUCKINGRIGHTNOW!!!!
RIGHT NOW!!!!
FUCKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ice cream!!!!
FUCK YOU SANCHEZ!! YOU'VE WRECKED MY HOPES, DREAMS, ANDEXPECTATIONS FOR YEARS!!! YOU FUCKER!!!!!!
Why is Rougened wearing a giant jacket?? WHY?!?
Uh, that wasn't strike 3.
In Sterling's spot for Rothman's, he just said when you need joint surgery, you need a surgeon who eats, breathes, and lives joints.
Better than acid, I guess.
No, Bern.
Wtf was Boone doing there with the bouncing?
Green doesn't have it today. This could get bad.
That's the Yankees I've grown to loathe.
Cheap infield hit, misplay by Locastro, two hits that were creamed off Green.
This is not good.
Oh no.
Why is Green still pitching??
So obvious. Yank him.
Boone is an idiot.
14 Walks and it's a close game?!?!?
And now Altuve.
Oh no.
I think we left 16 on base.
Oh fuck.
Boone is awful.
That's more like it.
Such Fuckers.
well, that sucked
Totally fucked up…
What Dick Allen said ...
Watching these scumbags celebrate is almost WORSE than watching the Red Sox celebrate.
Jesus, bring in Lugnut. Chapman. Anybody. What a shit job of managing.
What's that, three losses with big leads in the ninth?
Holy fuck.
Hal Steinbrenner is at this very moment petitioning MLB to shorten games to 8 innings.
"No matter what happens today" -- you weren't quite imaginative enough duque
Wow. You know, even relievers who aren't completely on their game have got to be able to hold 4-5 run leads in the ninth inning. There's just no excuse after awhile.
The last time I can remember a lead of this size in the last inning getting away was in...1968. Granted, there must have been others. But they were damned few and far between.
Last night a hero, and soon a zero. This epic, historic, soul-crushing meltdown was just what the doctor ordered right before the All-Star break. No reliable closer, a lineup full of washouts, regular playing time for some of the worst players in the majors, no promotion of the team's hottest prospects, and a $324-million star pitcher likely headed for the same lame-arm purgatory as Severino because of Boone's job insecurity and overall stupidity, just to snag a meaningless win in the middle of July. The apocalypse is coming, and not a moment too soon.
Out, out brief Cole!
This team is but a walking shadow, poor players
who strut and fret their hours upon the field
and then are seen no more.
It is team assembled by an idiot,
full of three true outcomes,
signifying mediocrity.
Missed the game. Lucky me.
Saw the minibox, naturally assumed El Chapo came in and finally convinced brainless to trade him.
Disappointed all around.
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