Rivera blew the save in Game 7 in 2001.
I think what he meant was that it was Rivera’s 42nd postseason save, and Rivera wears #42 on his back. Not that he has made 42 saves from 42 opportunities.
The Yankees have a revolving door when it comes to bench players but I really hope they keep Marcus Thames. What a year he’s had.
That game was exhausting. What a comeback! Hopefully CC won’t have that long a rest before his next start, he had no control early.
Exactly. He blew several saves over the years. I think 4 in all. 42 for 46 is pretty good but I loved the symmetry of 42 for the last man to where #42.
I agree. He is a perfect fit and was a Yankee Farmhand to boot which is always nice.
Probably the worst game CC pitched as a Yank and we still won it. That is a great sign for the series and a huge blow to the Rangers I think.
Oh, I gotcha.
If Mariano Rivera isn’t elected to the HoF on the first ballot I’m going to hunt down the sportswriters who didn’t vote for him and kick them all in the nuts.
Mariano Rivera’s career playoff stats are, taken as a whole, maybe the greatest SEASON a relief pitcher has ever had. Here are his career playoff stats: 92 games, 8-1 with 42 saves, and an ERA of 0.72 in 137 innings. That is ridiculous. You can’t possibly do that against the best teams in baseball, and yet he has done it.
If you look at any other player who’s played a lot of playoff games, they usually do about as well as they did in the regular season, or worse. Derek Jeter’s career playoff stats look like a conventional Derek Jeter season, albeit with a weirdly low number of RBI. Andy Pettite is 19-9 with a 3.87 ERA, a fairly normal Pettite season. And that’s actually quite impressive because of course they are facing tougher opposition; most players do much worse. Jorge Posada’s career playoff numbers are pretty bad, Chipper Jones sees his SLG drop eighty points, and Roger Clemens is good but not great.
Rivera in the regular season is the best relief pitcher who ever lived… and then in the playoffs he gets three times as good. His ERA drops from 2.23, which is already unreal, to 0.72, which is just comical.
While I agree it would be intensely boring to have the Yankees buy another World Series, I wouldn’t write the Rangers off just yet. A lot of people predicted doom when they blew two clinch opportunities at home against Tampa Bay, and they played like heroes. They could still do baseball a favour.
Momentum is just today’s starting pitcher, and the Yankees are planning on starting A.J. Burnett yet.
Absolutely, and i’m hoping it happens.
But, as What Exit? said, CC pitched one of his worst starts as a Yankee and they still won.
That’s what separates them from everyone else. If one of their $20-million-a-year pitchers happens to have a bad day, then there’s a good chance he’ll be picked up by one of their $25-million-a-year hitters, or perhaps one of the $20-million-a-year hitters, or maybe even by one of the $15-million-a-year hitters.
Well, not exactly the way we planned it, but we’ll take it. The Yankees once again showed how a tradition of winning for decades can lift a team to victory. Even when they were down big, they played in a controlled, professional manner. Even the inexperienced players looked completely natural in a pressure-packed setting. Joba Chamberlain and Dustin Moseley (combined salaries of <$1 million) were the real heroes. The positive thing is that Wood and Rivera got mound time. I hope Hughes goes about 6 innings tonight. I think Robertson needs to get some innings in. Tonight’s game is still big. The Yankees need to win to mitigate the upcoming Lee start. And they should.
Prediction: Yanks 8, Rangers 4
These late-inning rallies are going to have to occur pretty frequently if the Yankees have to face the Phillies, and win, in the WS.
Joe Morgan, is that you?
I’ve been a casual Rangers watcher for about 20 years now. This is definitely the best team and the best chance they’ve ever had. But, last night they showed why they’ve never been able to take it to the next level. They always seem to have 2-3 players on the roster that can be counted on to choke when the game is on the line. Last night it was Darren Oliver. I cringed when Washington put him on the mound and my cringe proved to be prophetic.
Ian Kinsler’s little base-running screw-up is another example of the recurring little mental lapses that have nagged this team for years.
Can’t wait for game one today for Phils and Giants. We might see 0-0 in the top of the 13th. 
It’s funny that nobody talks about the “single” Rodriguez hit that went through Michael Young. I know the ball was hit damned hard, but a major league third baseman should catch that ball. Stuff like that happens in every game but Young picked a bad time to play a ball from his heels.
So I’m a bit skeptical of the notion the Yankees won the game because of a “decade of winning” or whatever. They won it because they made one more good play than the Rangers did, no more and no less. And they’re losing right now in Game 2 not because of any matter of morale or courage but because Hughes is throwing pumpkins.
If they win the series it will be because they have more talented ballplayers - many of whom weren’t on most of those previous championship teams.
How on earth did Lance Berkman get picked off there? The play was RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. He could see Moreland running to the ball. And he just… wandered away from first.
Rangers fans sure were in their paper’s online comments. They were tearing at Young’s inability to field. I haven’t seen him enough to judge but he is not impressing me with his 3B play.
He giveth and he taketh away. Who knows what he was thinking.
I’m watching the on-line gamecast, so it’s a little hard to tell what’s happening in real life. But, one of the Ranger’s old habits seems to be hanging around. Their big bats, Young, Hamilton, Guererro, seem to consistently go down swinging trying to hit the 5 run home run. When Torre was still managing the Yankees, he would have his pitchers pitch down and away to them and they would nearly injure themselves trying to hit the ball.
The younger players seem to be doing a better job of making the pitchers pitch to them.
Joe Torre never managed the Yankees against either Guerrero or Hamilton on the Rangers.
Well, Vlad got a hit on an ungainly poke at a “bad” pitch a while back.
This is feeling like an awfully close 7-2 game.
Surprising (to me, at least) stat of the day: Vladimir Guerrero has had 7593 at bats in 2002 games and only has 929 career strikeouts. He’s never struck out 100 times in a season.
Are they actually saying that holding a 5 run lead is redemption? These announcers are a bit silly. It sure beats one of the worst postseason bullpen jobs ever but it is hardly on the level of redemption. Win the series without blowing another good size lead or at least hold a 1 run lead before the idiots at the mikes talk redemption.
Giants 4, Phillies 3. Not the pitching duel we expected but it was well played and Cody Ross with the early line on MVP.
I know it’s getting old to complain about the commentarors, but the play by play and colour work - actually, the entire broadcast - of the Rangers-Yankees game today was just excruciating. I’m actually not minding Tim McCarver because the afternoon game was so horrible.
First, you’re so very right about the “Redemption” thing. I mean, yes, they blew a lead in Game 1 and then held it in Game 2. Holding a five run lead is not a big deal, and to be honest blowing one lead isn’t really a big enough deal to merit “redemption” anyway. Jesus Christ, it was a bad inning in Game 1, it’s not like they blew four straight ninth inning leads or something. You’re broadcasting Game 2, let’s concentrate on that.
Secondly - hey, guys, I’m pretty sure that even casual fans know by now that Joe Girardi manages the Yankees, and Ron Washington manages the Rangers, and two or three shots a game is more than enough to let us in on what they look like. We just do not need to see a camera shot of them every two fucking minutes. They’re not DOING anything. They’re just standing there. Even as managers go, Girardi and Washington are pretty calm and don’t really do much. Please, show us something happening in the field, or show some replays, or comment on the defensive alignment, or something, for fuck’s sake.
Third, the colour commentating was absolutely brainless. I did not hear a single insight, not one single comment that gave me any information whatsoever. Just banal, stupid blather. Just a few minutes ago the Sportsnet commentator, Gregg Zaun, made a really interesting observation about how Ruiz was not presenting Halladay with a target at the beginning of Halladay’s motion, which he believed was part of the reason Halladay’s control was a bit off. It was fascinating. During the Rangers-Yankees game two former major leaguers sat there for three hours and said absolutely nothing at all like that. Why were they there?