Joba!
Posted on July 26th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
My, that was a fine baseball game last night, and even better because the morally superior team won. Beating Josh Beckett and shutting out the Red Sox in Fenway Park—I’m going to live off that (at least until today’s game).
What’s happened to the Yankees since the All-Star break? Well, Robinson Cano has finally started to hit. Derek Jeter has picked up his performance a notch.
But really, it’s just been the pitching, which has been awesome, and last night, Joba Chamberlain had one of those games that not only validates the decision to move him out of the bullpen into the starting rotation, but suggests that he’s going to be a great pitcher for a long time to come. Seven innings, just three hits, and nine strikeouts. Heaven.
(My, he really doesn’t like Kevin Youkilis, though, does he? Not that I can blame him—like many of the Red Sox, Youkilis is a terrible, terrible human being; plus, he looks like he wants to be your best friend in prison) but Joba should probably lay off those pitches in the head and neck area. Scary!)
And then my guy Jason Giambi drives in the only run with something you see less frequently from him than you see the Sox getting shut out at Fenway: an opposite-field single.
Even Sox fans will agree that this was a terrific baseball game. Let’s hope that the next two are equally good…and that the morally superior team continues to come out on top.
(By the way, Mike Lowell is ridiculous for arguing that called third strike so vehemently. Sure, it was borderline. But what’s the point of getting yourself thrown out of the game?)
P.S. The Yankees made a trade! And it sounds like a good one: They get an outfielder having a career year and a left-handed reliever, which, astonishingly, they lacked, in exchange for four minor-leaguers.
5 Responses
7/26/2008 10:30 am
That pitch was way out of the zone, RB, though you’re right on the futility of arguing—but wrong on the moral superiority
7/26/2008 10:35 am
Well, from my angle—i.e., about 200 miles south of Boston—it looked…close. (Close enough!)
But that ump had an odd strike zone. He was consistently calling high strikes, and he didn’t give Joba some low pitches that looked knee-high to me. So, given that the umpire had established a high strike zone, Lowell was a ding-dong for taking the pitch, and morally inferior for getting all huffy about it.
7/26/2008 10:37 am
P.S. Ding-dong—that’s a technical term.
(As you can see, I’m a little giddy this morning.)
7/26/2008 1:09 pm
The third strike to Lowell was inside (don’t they have the pitch-spot visual on the NY station?). But not as far off the plate as the third strike to Ellsbury was outside (actually, two third strikes to Ellsbury were far outside, I am thinking of the last one). Chamberlain was great, but he got a lot greater when the plate got to be a yard wide.
I suspect Lowell and Youkilis were both showing some displaced anger, which was really aimed at Manny, the unspoken story last night. If there was ever a night when the Sox needed his bat, this was it. You’re tied for first and playing the Yankees and you wait until an hour before game time to say your knee hurts too much to play (for reasons that are invisible in the MRI)? Let’s hope Shaughnessy is right.
7/26/2008 6:50 pm
Shaughnessy is hardly ever right about anything. He may even be wrong more consistently than our host, which is saying something, since the above post both calls the Yankees the “morally superior team” and calls Jason Giambi “[his] guy.” That’s some cognitive dissonance, right there.