The fact that the Yankees struck out 18 times, with all four Rays pitchers posting exactly 2 Ks per inning pitched, might also have been a minor factor in the defeat.
True, but without the 4 runs given up by Happ the Yankees would have won anyway. Stanton, with 4 RBI on 2 homers, could have been enough by himself.
The Yankees might well have lost anyway, but sometimes “too smart is dumb.”
“If our pitcher hadn’t given up those runs, we probably would have won the game.” It’s the Yogi Berra school of baseball analysis! 
I agree that the strategy itself might not have been ideal, but whatever the strategy, Happ still has to go out there and pitch, and giving up three walks and five hits, including two homers, in 2.2 innings isn’t a great performance no matter how he got in the game. I can’t imagine that this was sprung on Happ during the first inning; if this was the pre-game strategy, he was most likely aware well before the game that he would be called into the game early.
My point is that despite those 18 strikeouts, the Yankees were still competitive for most of the game. They scored five runs, and only lost by two. They brought the tying run to the plate in the top of the 9th. Tampa wasn’t as dominant as the number of strikeouts implies.
Yeah, the fact that it wasn’t a great performance was part of my point too. Happ’s regular season ERA was 3.48, and for those innings it was 13.40, so he wasn’t pitching up to his normal form. I’m sure he was well aware he might be used that way. But that’s not his normal role, and he was clearly un-Happy about being used that way.
All credit to the Rays, and I’m not saying they might not have won anyway if Happ had started. I’m mainly complaining about the Yankees using cheap-ass tactics. (And I’m surprised about not getting more support from Yankee-haters on that. 
)
I’m a fan of bat flips, emotions in sports, and “letting them play”. Manny Machado erupting after his HR and throwing his bat into his dugout while yelling “Fuck yes! Fuck yes!” is tremendous.
Manny Machado having to eat his words a few inning later after Cody Bellinger commits a felony robbing Tatis of a CF home run is poetic. What a game.
And now the season comes down to Jordan Montgomery. Tampa looks like the better team, so you just have tip your cap and call them daddy.
Just once I would have liked to see this team at full strength. Sevy and Paxton could have been difference makers this postseason, but that’s baseball Suzyn.
This isn’t baseball, it’s home run derby. Which isn’t very entertaining.
A few more runs would be nice insurance. Go Yanks.
With just a little luck, all decided by game 5.
And on to game 5.
So game 5 coming up. Yanks vs. Rays 2-2
Congrats to the Braves sweeping Miami out.
I’m going to say Boo to the Houston Cheaters beatings the A’s 3-1.
I have been a baseball fan for four decades. I’m a fan of a team that literally had one of the two most important home runs in the history of MLB. And honest to God, I am so sick of all these home runs.
Baseball has NEVER seen so many home runs and strikeouts. Consider:
HOME RUNS: This year the average team hit 1.275 homers per game, a pace for 207 homers a year. The Dodgers were on pace for 319 bombs. Those are amazing numbers and yet last year was worse; the average team hit about 220 homers. That’s astounding; the historical live ball average in modern times is like 110, 120, something like that.
STRIKEOUTS: Strikeouts are just totally out of control, and all standards have been totally reset. The average MLB pitcher now strikes out one man an inning. Historically, that is an utterly ridiculous number.
Think of great strikeout pitchers of the past. We just lost Bob Gibson, there was a terrifying strikeout machine. Gibson never in his career averaged a strikeout an inning in any season. I shit you not, look it up. His best was 8.4K/9, in 1970. In his amazing 1968 season he got 7.9K/9, a number that today would literally classify him as a control pitcher. This year’s Toronto Blue Jays, who had a generally shitty starting rotation, had FIVE pitchers with more than 7.9K/9.
Goose Gossage? His career K/9 was 7.5; he got above 9 many times but not anything you’d even notice today. Steve Carlton? 7.1, he never got above 9. Prior to the steroid era the only pitcher above 9 was Nolan Ryan, and again at 9.5 he’d not even be among today’s leaders.
If you look at a list of the best k/9 seasons of all time, they are virtually all in the last 20-25 years and disproportionately in the last ten, and the ones in the last ten are so out of proportion to anything that came before it’s like they were playing a different sport. Excluding 2020, the record is Gerrit Cole’s 13.8 last year. No one prior to the steroid era is even in that galaxy; the pre-1995 best is Nolan Ryan’s 11.4. The top fifty includes exactly two seasons from before 1995; Ryan twice and Dwight Gooden. That’s it. More than half are just since 2015.
From the perspective of batters it’s just as bad. The thirty biggest strikeout seasons of all time - and 46 of the top 50, or 87 of the top 100 - are all in the 21st century.
This is boring. It just is. It’s dull to see nothing but strikeouts and home runs. It reduces the amount of stuff the fan sees, and it reduces the relative value of defensive skill and baserunning skill (which is a shame, because players have never been more talented defensively.) It reduces variation in strategy. As I am fond of pointing out, the 1982 World Series featured a matchup between a team that hit 216 homers but only stole 84 bases (the Brewers) and a team that hit just 67 homers but stole 200 bases (the Cardinals.) That’s interesting to watch, to see teams try different approaches.
I mean, it used to be really something if a pitcher struck out ten men in a game. Now, who cares?
I don’t know what they’re supposed to do about this but I wish they’d do something.
As someone who occasionally tries and usually fails to get into baseball I completely agree. Strikeouts and home runs can be exciting, but they’re not as interesting as good base-running or amazing fielding or steals. I hate the way stealing is dying out. This is probably a terrible idea, and it would literally never happen, but I would love to watch at least some experimental games where a home run…isn’t. Instead, it’s a ground rule triple. More fielding and base-running, less of a reward for just going for power.
Baseball feels pretty broken right now. There is a lot of factors. The pace of the game is the #1 problem to me. The Home Run & Strike Outs is a big factor. The way pitching is used now is another. The pumped in stadium noise even in non-covid seasons annoys me. The game use to breath while moving a lot faster.
God, I sound old. I’m only in my 50s.
I think that’s a little extreme because NO home runs isn’t fun. I am inclined to think
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The mound should be moved back six to twelve inches. That might not sound like much but it’s quite substantial; the effective average difference is to make every pitch about 2-3 MPH slower.
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The ball should be slightly deadened.
The former thing increases contact, while the latter will convert hits from homers to base hits.
It irritates me too, and MLB just refuses to do anything about it for some reason.
They are weirdly averse to fixing anything that matters. They seemed very eager to make long extra inning games not a problem anymore, but they hadn’t been a problem before; that was such a bizarre thing to fixate on. If really long extra inning games happened all the time, sure, deal with that. But they were quite rare, so they seemed special and cool, not irritating.
The 3-batter rule is pointless, too. I did a post on that last year, but basically, it rarely comes into play anyway. If you don’t believe me, just pick out any random day from the last ten years and look at all the boxscores for that day on Baseball Reference. You will be amazed how FEW pitching changes actually are prevented by the 3-batter rule. On some days there were a full slate of games and literally not one single pitching change in any of them violated the 3-batter rule.
Whitey Ford just passed at age 91. He was the greatest starter in Yankees History and most World Series Wins ever.
The other “Chairman of the Board” has passed. Pretty much the last great Yankee of that era. Damn.
I saw him at many an Old Timers Game but never saw him pitch, he was before my time. A very colorful character too, a true Lefty.
Jesus, we’re losing a lot of MLB legends lately.
Yeah, when you look at the demographics of this board, we’re going to be seeing a lot of that with musicians and athletes we grew up with.
Ford was 91, so probably not too many members of the SDMB saw him pitch and hanging on to 91 isn’t bad at all.
To further illustrate Rickjay’s point, Ford averaged 5.6 Ks per 9 over his career. It makes you wonder how they got all of those outs back in the day. A lot of weak contact, I guess.
I’m trying to remember, I think Whitey made it to the 2018 Old Timers game and road the golf cart and tipped his hat. I know he missed last years. It was either 2018 or 2017 and he was still wearing pinstripes for it.
But he threw his last real pitch before I was born.
Keep in mind, he pitched with Joe D. playing Centerfield behind him. It was only Whitey’s rookie year, but still.
#16
Yes, he was on many great teams, but he started Game 1 of the World Series EIGHT times.