Ladies and gentlemen… Mariano Rivera.
I’m only half paying attention, but was there no possibility of a double switch with Mariano and a different outfielder? Weird that the best reliever in the game has to leave the game for a pinch-hitter, and then Girardi went for the mix-and-match thing with only a handful of pitchers left. Oh well, he’d be a genius if they won, I guess.
Way to over-manage Girardi… you only had your 3-4-5 coming up in the top of the next inning… frigging douche
Tie game! The Dodgers might wind up with a little offense after all tonight.
Only if you consider long homers to dead center offense. 
Ugh. Rough game Dodgers came back and really did a great job tonight. It was looking good after the first, but Wolf really settled down after that and put in a great start.
I hate that the Phillies defense has been screwing up during the series when it was so great during the season. But, that’s the post season for you.
One good note to take from the game Brad Lidge really looked good in his inning. I won’t say he is back. But, I will say I am a lot more confident in him now than I was a week ago.
YAY!
anti jinx!
Jroll!
Wow, two walk-off LCS games within a few hours. Exciting stuff.
Not that there isn’t a time and place for forfeiting the use of the DH, but I don’t agree with what Girardi did last night. I think the post season makes managers over-manage. Too many pinch runners, too many 1 or 2 out pitchers. If it was anyone but Rivera on the mound, I could see giving up the DH for a critical defensive inning. But now when you’ve already burned the bulk of your bullpen.
I don’t know that Rivera pitches a 2nd inning anyway, he has thrown a lot this post-season, but I generally agree. Has any pinch runner thus far made the difference between scoring and not scoring? Compare that to the amount of times a lackluster hitter comes up in a big spot, because the better hitter had already been removed.
Well the Yanks were playing away and Joe managed to keep every reliever available for tonights game. Well, maybe not Hughes.
Pulling Robertson was odd, almost as odd as having Marte face one lefty to end an inning and pulling Coke in to face a different lefty to start the next. Or pinch-hitting Hairston for Gardner who actually has better numbers and is a fairly good light hitter. The fact he used up his bench so fast was depressing.
However, not letting Mo’ pitch another inning I was OK with. It was the right move in my opinion consider the game situation and history and facing another game the following night.
Joe G suffers from Tony LaRussa syndrome in the Post Season apparently. He never manages like this normally.
Hopefully CC is OK on short rest, I very much think this was the correct call. Hopefully the Yankee batters remember how to hit. Jeter, A-Rod and Posada have really carried the team. The bottom of the order has done nothing. If the Yanks were hitting at all, Joe G would not have had the chance to over-manage. Of course this same style of over-managing has worked 2 out of 3 times so far, but it seems like he took it to another level last night.
I was thinking of it as Bobby V’s Disease, but yes. There was no reason to pull Robertson, and you do not get bonus points for using up your entire bench and all your relievers. (It’s baseball, not Scrabble.) Most of those moves worked Saturday, but not yesterday. I hope he stops this.
Amen to that. I thought Leyland made a mistake running for Ordonez in game 163 and could have used his bat later. Then last night, Joe and Tim were whining because the Angels didn’t bring in a pinch runner for the man on third freaking base!
So was Cervelli the last guy off the bench? (I can’t find a postseason roster for the life of me.) I guess that makes sense: 3 catchers + DH = shallow bench. I wonder what he would have done if this was an elimination game, though – have Mariano bat, I suppose. (Is there a Yankee reliever who can bunt worth a damn? That’s always an interesting situation.)
Hey, Rivera has an RBI this year, he could have batted for himself.
Cervelli, Molina and Guzman were all that were left. He took Guzman over Hinske. Also CC Sabathia probably had the most power on the bench.
Geeze, what is going on with the umping in this game? A bad call on the pickoff at second, a bad call on the tag-up…
. . . and now another bad call at 3B. McClelland is not having a good game.
Third base ump just missed another one. Two Yankees both get tagged while they’re off the base and only one gets called out. How’d he miss that?
Man, the Yankees bribed all the refs this game.
… seriously, what the hell?