I have to agree with all you points and it was good to see the Giants get one.
Well, it wasn’t quite the pitchers’ battle that most people were expecting, but what a game in Philly tonight…but I could do with the Giants playing just *one *game that was decided by more than a single run. This one, though, seemed a lot less torturous than the last few…
Sanchez tomorrow for the Giants. He’s been pitching as well as anyone else in the clutch lately. I’d love to see the Giants come home up 2…
Giants baseball has been torture all year. Mel Kuiper’s line about that is in KNBR’s promo bits. It actually makes it “easy” for me to catch some of the games. I’ve watched Brian Wilson pitch more than any of the starters.
+1
This was not the game I was expecting, and I nearly had a heart attack in the ninth inning. Stupid Giants!
Rough game for the Phils. Not the pitching duel everyone expected, but good enough for the Giants,and not quite good enough for Halliday and the Phillies. Three homeruns from the 8 spot? I don’t think many would have guessed that.
Oh well. Tomorrow is another game and another chance. We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully, Oswalt will be a little bit better than he was against the Reds.
On an AL note, I am surprised by how hard hit the Yankees starters have been. It was only 7 runs, but it seemed like every inning Hughes was up against the ropes. And, CC fared only a little bit better. That series has a good chance to be really interesting. We’ll see how Lee reacts to being back in the Yankee stadium spotlight (My guess would be very well.)
Andrus’ base running in the 1st really rattled Hughes, IMO. That was some superior work right there.
It’s interesting to me that the Rangers pull some sort of stunt like this every game or two, almost always early in the game, and yet nobody sees it coming. Twice against the Rays someone scored from second base on a groundout. I mean, Jesus, keep your head up.
Surely you mean Giants radio announcer Duane Kuiper, not ESPN NFL draft expert Mel Kiper.
But, he did manage the Yankees when Juan Gonzales, Ivan Rodriques, and Rafeal Palmeiro were on the Rangers. The Rangers’ offensive strategy during those years seem to be: Hit a home run on every pitch. In my opinion, Joe Torre exploited that better than any other manager and that is the biggest reason that last night was the Rangers’ first playoff win at home.
Those memories came back when I saw Vlad go down on four pitches, three of them out of the strike zone, in game one. Like Blank Slate said, the stats show that his approach is effective, but damn it’s frustrating to see it happen in a clutch situation.
One of the announcers mentioned during a game that, under Washington, the Rangers’ home run total and strikeout total has gone down every year, but the number of wins has gone up every year. That is progress.
Well Jorge does mostly play catcher with his bat. At his best he was a good catcher but no one ever called him a great defensive catcher. I assume we’re talking about the double steal here? I doubt Pudge or Girardi would have fallen for that one so easily.
Jorge will probably be the backup next year and DH most of the time. I would not be shocked to see his catching time dropped to 60 starts tops. Despite his offense, I a child of the 70s still think he is only the Yanks 4th best catcher of all time and not third like many list him. Munson was a smarter and better catcher with a good bat by 70s standards. (Of course Berra and Dickey are without question #1 & #2)
Yeah, just realized my own mistake. :smack: I’ll blame the Evan Williams.
That’s neither true nor meaningful.
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First and foremost, ascribing any sort of strategic brilliance to winning one game is just silly. The Rangers won Game 2 because their pitchers pitched well and New York’s starter pitched badly. A data sample of a few games means almost nothing.
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The Rangers of the 1990s were not especially one dimensional teams. They hit lots of homers… but then, so did the Yankee teams they lost to. The Rangers had consistently good batting averages as well, finishing above the league average in batting in 1996 and leading the league in average in 1998 and 1999.
That’s false. The Rangers home run total went up in Washington’s second year as manager, and then went up again his third year as manager.
The main reason the Rangers are winning more games isn’t that their offense is improving by hitting fewer homers and doing other things. Their pitching and defense is improving.
Runs Allowed Per Game By The Texas Rangers:
2007 - 5.21, third worst in the AL
2008 - 5.97, worst in the AL
2009 - 4.84, seventh in the AL
2010 - 4.24, fourth in the AL
Basically, they made CJ Wilson a starting pitcher, brought Colby Lewis back from Japan and traded for Cliff Lee. The rest of the staff is more-or-less the same guys as they’ve had in recent years.
This is why I hate Yankee fans - if they Yankees win a playoff game, there’s about 50 posts about it on my Facebook News Feed. If they lose a game, there isn’t even 1 post to say “well that game sucked, but they’ll win the next two”. It’s like their fans back into a hole with their tail between their legs every single time they lose.
That’s what I get for listening to the announcers. :smack:
That’s kinda my point. In the '90s, they didn’t seem to care that pitching and defense were less than stellar. They just hoped to out-homer everyone else. They didn’t care that they lost games by walking in (or hitting a batter) the winning run in the 9th. They didn’t care they they had outfielders that couldn’t run around the bases without taking on oxygen. Okay, I’m exaggerating. I’m sure they cared. But, to the casual fan who only watched or listened on the radio once or twice a week, it sure seemed like they didn’t do anything about it.
There used to be an old guy they called Zonk that sat in the front row on the first base line. He had a tom-tom that he pounded on during the game. You could even hear him on the radio. I think it was the year they signed Conseco, one of the local TV crews interviewed Zonk and asked him if he thought the improved Rangers offense would help their chances that year. Zonk said, something to the effect of, “Not really. Now they’ll just lose 12 - 10 instead of 12 - 2.” That’s pretty much how it went, as I remember.
I hope old Zonk is still around to see this year’s playoff run.
That’s why I fear the Yankees will win this series. Watching Oliver walk the first two hitters he faced in game 1, for example. Although, last night, he seemed to get it together, so, maybe there’s hope.
What the hell? At least two Yankee fans checked in yesterday after the loss. There aren’t that many of us here. Facebook? You expect real fans there?
Those Ranger teams were just as good as this one, though. This year they won 90 games. In those years they won 90. 88, and 95 games. They’re pretty much as good now as they were then. Say what you will about their defense back then but they had one of the greatest defensive catchers of all time and they had lots of other pretty decent fielders, too. They fought pretty darned hard in the 1996 ALDS, and in 1998 and 1999 they got squashed by one of the greatest teams ever assembled.
Certainly this team is a bit more pitching-and-defense oriented than those ones, but it hasn’t really proven a lot yet. Playoff series are crapshoots. Lots of seemingly inferior teams have won it all. Any series could go either way. I’m just hoping they win because after fifty years I think the fans could use a winner.
Seven game series are a lot better than 5. The opening series are crap shoot. Two good pitching performances, a couple errors and the favorite is gone. A crappy team with a couple pitchers can send the Yankees home where they belong.
Cody Ross, waiver pickup.
The Rodeo Clown strikes again.