Posted on 09/07/2023 6:46:43 AM PDT by 4Runner
This game is an absolute classic performance by two teams that battled all year. In some ways there was no loser. Boston played a great game. They hit some balls very hard off Guidry & had 5 hits versus the Goose. It's not too often that a team plays as well as it can possibly play and loses. That's what happened to Boston in this game. And the Yanks, both in 77 & 78, had a knack for clutch hitting & timely fielding plays. Both teams put on a performance that will never be forgotten.
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I don’t think the manager is the problem, because even to my amateur eyes I can see the obvious problems with that lineup:
1. They have no contact hitters, and nobody who just looks to get on base. It seems like 75% of their plate appearances end with a strikeout or a home run.
2. Related to #1 … Their typical starting lineup has 6-7 players whose best position is DH.
3. Related to #1 … Aaron Judge leads the team with 31 home runs. He has all of 58 RBIs. Does the guy ever drive in any runs without hitting a ball over the fence?
You make a valid point about contact hitters and building runs, but the contact hitters they have (LeMahieu for example) get no hits. I went to a game a couple of months ago against the Red Sux. The yanks had maybe 3 hits. Their designated hitter had a batting average ~ 150. Pathetic.
Something I forgot to mention is that when the slumping players LEAVE the Yankees, they suddenly get hot again! There is a big problem in that clubhouse.
True. Also Sox pitcher Mike Torrez must have let loose with a few choice words when the Sox relieved him after 6 innings and he threw everything he had in his hands against the back wall of the dugout.
“It’s a home run!”
The Yankees had a lot of sponsors. I’m old enough to remember when most teams had three — a beer, a brand of gasoline, and one other.
Both teams came in to the game 99-63.
Yankee fans worried that now they’d have to use Ken Clay and Jim Beattie in Game of the ALCS. For once, they were both good and the Yankees won that game.
Rodon will be fine. Donaldson was a bad move from teh get-go, though IKF leads the team in batting average with RISP.
The biggest problem wiht Stanton is that he clogs too much payroll.
So far, the kids are doing well. (Except for Pereira, hwo looks overmatched. Very small sample.) Now, please give Florial his shot.
Cashman was a great GM. But he’s workign off a playbook that worked for him 20 years ago. He needsd to update it.
The 6 1/2 back in the wild card isn’t really the problem — it’s that they hvae several teams to climb over, and they’re not all likely to go into a tailspin at the same time.
Apparently, Aaron Boone has the same middle name.
When Don Zimmer became Joe Torre’s bench coach with the Yankees, he rented a house from Bucky Dent and he said there was a picture of the homerun in every room.
Two names ot consider: Joe Espada and Hensley Meulens.
I was watching in the student union in Hillsdale. One of my best friends was datign a woman from New England. Nice girl, but she was a RedSox fan. And he was Polish.
Did I have fun with them when Yastrzemski made that out.
I’ll take 8 of 9.
They don’t use their best contact hitters. The best hitter with RISP, the onely one over .300 in that situation, is IKF.
The roster you build to win a championship is not the same roster you build to fill Yankee Stadium 81 times in a baseball season.
This has been a persistent problem for New York sports teams since the 1990s.
Good teams have depth. The Yankees’ injuries (at one point, they had literally half a roster on the injured list at the same time exposed their lack of depth — somethign Cashman used to be good at. (Luis Sojo comes to mind.)
I think pitching Torrez may have energized the Yankees. Remember, he had been a Yankee the year before and signed with the Red Sox — the enemy! — as a free agent.
Florial is already gone. He becomes a free agent because he’s been DFA’d and there’s absolutely no way he re-signs with the Yankees.
As for Cashman: 14 years as the best team on paper, and zero pennants since 2009. WORST GM EVER
Ha! I would have too!
Shot heard round the world, at least in baseball.
Don Mattingly knew how to hit. The hitting coach they just got rid of was Marcus Thames, a former top five-tools, monstrously powerful prospect. The reason he never became a superstar? The guy had no idea how to hit a ball. Compare him to Don Mattingly who was never terribly powerful but hit the ball on the nose so perfectly so often that he was annually among the very top of the league in slugging percentage, until he hurt his back. For a four year stretch, he was good for 30 home runs per year with a .337 batting average and an OPS+ at first base of 155%.
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