Daily Archives: July 23, 2005

Slammed

Six runs was not enough tonight. Derek Jeter went 4-4 with a home run, while Robinson Cano and Jason Giambi had dingers too, but Kevin Brown was awful as the Yanks dropped their third straight to the Angels. The final score was 8-6. What began as a promising road trip has now officially hit the skids. The Yanks are 5-5 since the break and they fell another game behind Boston who shutout the White Sox tonight in Chicago.

Al Leiter was hit hard last night in California as the Angels beat the Yanks, 6-3. The Red Sox lost as well, so the Bombers are still only a game-and-a-half back. I can’t stand the Angels. Did you see the two Molina brothers celebrating like mad after they both truckulated their fat asses home against Leiter. Calm down, boys. The whole team gets really geared up to beat New York. Makes it tough to watch. Ugh. Hopefully, the boys can rally and win these last two.

It’s in the Numbers

Meanwhile, I was hanging out with Jay Jaffe yesterday afternoon, and we were talking about how well Jason Giambi has been playing. Using David Pinto’s terrific Day by Day database, we looked to see just how long he’s been doing well for. While we were at it, we took a look at Tino Martinez’s numbers over roughly the same time. The dates may seem arbitrary, but they were selected to best illustrate how much better an offensive player Giambi has been (of course, you could counter this by showing Giambi’s numbers while Tino was on that hot streak, but that was more of a fluke than the norm).

From close to two months, from May 24 through July 22, Giambi has been a monster: .352/.497/.689. On the other hand, from May 20 through July 19 (the day before Tino’s two home-run game), Martinez hit a most unflattering .122/.215/.183. Yikes.