
From Bryan Hoch:
Cody Bellinger’s flare dropped safely onto the outfield grass late Tuesday, and suddenly the big ballpark in the Bronx was shaking with the promise of an epic postseason rally. Three consecutive singles opened the ninth inning, and for maybe the first time all night, the Yankees looked like they were in business.
Bases loaded, none out and Aroldis Chapman on the ropes – one swing would have stolen Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series from their oldest rivals. Instead, the Bombers watched the Red Sox shake hands on the Yankee Stadium infield soon after, pondering a 3-1 loss that could’ve gone much differently.
One manager allowed his star lefty to throw a ton of pitches, and kept the opposing team’s lefty hitters on the bench. One manager pulled his star lefty when he was cruising to bring in a pitcher who had terrible numbers against the first batter he was going to face, plus a bunch of lefty hitters that were now going to come off of the bench.
Guess which one won?
The only upside is that Garrett Crochet can’t pitch again this series, so maybe they have a chance. Probably not, but maybe!
Featured image is Eric Sogard changing the entire game by daring Judge to throw him out at second (Judge could not, as he barely cracked 70 MPH on his throw to second). Pathetic.
Austin Wells belongs on the bench.
Wells hitting 113 in the postseason season, that’s the 4th lowest BA of any non pitcher with at least 50 ABs.
I’m not watching since I’m overseas and it seems like not watching is best for people my age.
Boone does it again, eh? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – they are never going to win a WS with this idiot managing. (Though maybe the 1998 yanks would have?) so why bother watching?
The problem is always the same.
They don’t hit. They scored 1 run.
They strike out too much against playoff pitching.
They have no one to go to in the bullpen.
Does it matter if it was in the 7th or the 8th? Weaver immediately let up the lead.
Even Bednar let up a run.
Fried wasn’t pitching a complete game so there there was no path to victory tonight.
I think it matters, since if he gets through seven, they would have Williams in the 8th, and he had a fine 8th. So even if Bednar gives up a run in the ninth, it’d just be tied.
Lifting Fried was simply moronic. Cora was playing to win the game no matter what, while Boone was, like, “What about next week?”
But yes, the biggest picture is that if they face even SLIGHTLY good pitchers, their offense shuts down, and so when they face REALLY good pitchers, they’re just pathetic balls of goo.
Somebody posted this on Twitter. Aaron Boone playoff record “ 7 wins and 20 loses when they don’t play against a team from the AL Central.”
On the comment from the end of the game to this point: thank you all for saying exactly what I could have said.
Yes, all that.
Fried out-pitched Crotchet (as far as he was allowed to go), and they lost on sheer stupidity. The rest is window dressing.
The thing about Judge’s throw is interesting, though. It’s been a while since that injury.
Chris Canty shredded Boone on ESPN Radio this morning
One more thought:
Boston HAD to win this game. If they DIDN’T win Crotch’s start, they were done.
I feel very good about NY’s chances in a game 3 – I’ve been very impressed with Schlittler and Boston’s 3rd spot is a huge question mark.
The second game now, I think, determines the outcome of this series.
Game 3?
Not playing Jazz last night was not good. He is clearly the superior player to Rosario, plus now Jazz is super pissed off and as emotional as he is, it could hurt him going forward. Playing the lefty Wells over the lefty Rice is almost criminal.
Also, Weaver sucks.
Yanks -173/Townies +160 tonight.
NYY a +170 dog to come back and win the series.
My fair for the game is NYY -130, fwiw.
Bruce Bochy is available..
I would imagine he’s about a lock to return to San Francisco, right?
If I were he, I’d come to New York (they’re not looking for anyone, of course, but if they were).
How often do you have the greatest market in the world… and the bar set so ridiculously low you could suck like a remora and still be the feted hero.
Bochy has already won World Series with two teams, and taken a third there, so I imagine, at 70 years old, he’ll be cool with getting the hero’s return to San Francisco where his former star player is now in charge of the team.
Of course they could have won. They were ahead, and they weren’t blown out , and they had the bases loaded with no outs.
Stanton could hit a home run (or strike out) against anyone. Jazz a little less so, but also. Ultimately anyone could get lucky. When you have the bases loaded with no outs, you’re set up for luck.
There was also that inning where two or three balls were absolutely ripped to the wall, just right where they were just catchable.
Of course they could have won this game.
But – I add this for Aaron Boone’s benefit: they can’t anymore.
I don’t understand why Jazz didn’t start yesterday. He’s not that bad against LHPs, he’s far better than Grisham against LHPs. Rosario need to play, McMahon had to sit, now you either use Cabby over Grish or not. Boone disrespected Jazz as he did Rice when he said starting Wells was “not a close call.” Then he couldn’t find an AB for Rice. Wells is a 113 post season hitter.
Think how much more pissed we would be bases loaded, no outs, if Boston didn’t get an insurance run
Whatever else Boone screws up in this particular series, the important part is remembering he is also responsible for even HAVING to play in this series. So he doubly screwed this team. How can you seriously even root for a team that cares so little about winning?
If only we had a GM who took notice.
Or an owner who at least occasionally remembered the baseball team lying in the pile of his other trinkets.
“We’re going to keep playing our game,” said Yankees captain Aaron Judge. “We’re coming into this postseason rolling, everybody clicking, bullpen working, starting pitching has been elite. So we’ll just focus on what we’ve got to do.”
Is Judge more of a cliche than Jeter? I think he might believe what he says. Not so sure Jeter did.
I have no doubt Jeter wanted to win and was extremely disappointed when he didn’t. However, if Judge is actually this optimistic on everything, he is completely delusional and kind of stupid.
It’s funny that we root for a team with that kind of culture.
And, I guess, it funny that the greatest star for a team with that kind of culture was the Babe. So I guess I’ll position myself with the Babe and on down through Scooter, Joe Pepitone, Nettles, Sparky, Reggie, Bernie, David Wells and David Cone. I can root for that.
I’ve only seen glimpses, but there seems to be something very cool about the culture of the Padres.
Judge is not stupid. It’s bland, but what else can he say?
He’s not Swisher or Ricky (I’m not talking about stupidity, but they could say… anything. Judge isn’t like that.).
Of course everybody isn’t clicking, Austin Wells for one.
What else can Judge say? He can be honest…
“We’ve struggled in the post-season before and haven’t gotten it done in the past, myself included. We made things harder on ourselves by not winning the division, but we are know what needs to be done and we have a lot of work to do, but we are up to challenge.”
Telling everyone how they are world beaters when they are wild card team that won 94 games sounds delusional.
Yeah, I’d like it if he said something like that.
In his defense, I don’t think he was saying they’re world-beaters, I think he meant that they came into the post-season on a big winning streak that they should try to continue.
But sure.
Caballero’s fly ball last night was the third longest drive of the playoffs, #1 and 2 were Ohtani, 4 and 5 were Teoscar. The other 4 were home runs.
Gleyber just alertly advanced on a wild pitch and if he was still in a Yankee uniform he’d somehow have ended up running toward the dugout and get tangled up in the tarp.
Wasn’t that A Dylan song, Tangled Up in Tarp?
The runner cannot get thrown out at third, but he did. Guardians cut down runner at 3B; replay erases go-ahead run.
https://x.com/MLB/status/1973453980182388997
Jorge Posada casts a long, long shadow.
Can you imagine? Wow.
And as for that run – well, so they’re Indian givers, what did you expect?
The Cleveland Whatevers blow it open with 5-runs in the bottom of the eighth.
Kirschner on bringing in Jazz while for D while trailing knowing Chapman awaited.
https://x.com/chriskirschner/status/1973373376082186299?s=61&t=fhOaqwtc8q2TMSXUDRjPeg
Yep, it was one of the most baffling Boone decisions I’ve seen this season, as there just didn’t seem to be ANY logic behind it at all.
When has logic come into Boone’s decisions?
Brian, I can’t agree. I remember a few times Boone made exactly the decision we wanted, really good decisions. You can’t tell me those decisions weren’t far more baffling than this one!
on my work computer the most recent post is sic semper’s.
here i have excalibur discussing boone logic (oxymoron).
is it just me?
No you might be logged out in which case you need to log in again. If not try logging out or closing the window. Happens to me a lot I get message you need to log in to reply.
im in LG!