If I lived back east, I would have been thrilled to sleep through tonight’s atrocity at Angels Stadium. Instead, I had to witness Yankees’ relief pitchers walk six batters – the Angels actually batted around without a hit – and blow what had been a tense pitchers’ duel between Phelps and Weaver.
Home plate ump Laz Diaz didn’t help. With bases loaded with Yankees and nobody out, Gardner stepped in and was the beneficiary of a couple of truly bad calls. Girardi came out to argue, got tossed and hung around to have what looked like an aneurism. He and Diaz have history and Diaz has ejected him before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Joe go nuts like he did tonight. Sheesh.
So yeah, Diaz is a lousy ump, but that doesn’t excuse the parade of grotesqueness that was Shawn Kelley, Matt Thornton and Preston Claiborne. The game had been tied at 1-1 and what did they do? Lose the game. How do you not throw strikes? Ever?
Lost in all this was Phelps’ terrific performance. Just great. Ichiro laid down the most beautiful bunt; I hope the other players were taking notes. And Jeter’s bat had life after all, although he did hit into a double play and kill a rally.
I’ll try to swallow this bitter pill, but it’ll be hard.
I know its happened before last night, but it truly does not seem like The New York Yankees when they have an inning with the bases loaded and no one out and they cannot score a single run. Yes, the umpire was less that accurate, but come on! These are The Bronx Bombers. They have to find ways to score. Let’s hope they can go on a winning run now. GO YANKEES!!!
That was a horrible inning, Diane. Bases loaded, Ichiro laid down that perfect bunt and Gardner strikes out. Terrible at bat for him, bad call or not. And then Jeter hitting into that double play was a killer. Couldn’t believe nobody could get one single run in. That said, the bullpen coughed it up with those walks so scoring wouldn’t have meant much.
I just hope we have hit bottom with this bad streak. I do not like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Gack!!
That’s what happens when you try to pitch too fine. It’s like everyone was afraid of giving up the big hit. Well you can’t strike someone out without giving the batter a pitch that at least looks good.
And for all this talk of the “fastbreak” offense that the Angels have, they sure do look patient at the plate. They just don’t really seem to chase that 2-strike pitch often. Remember Tanaka pitched against them and walked 4 batters! They just wouldn’t bite on that splitter very often. We just have to give them credit for laying off pitches and taking their walks. I’ve never seen a “walk-around” until last night.
But like John Sterling says, “that’s baseball…”