"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

Bombs Away

A few of my co-workers are Yankee fans. One of them is a classic glass-half-full personality. On Friday morning when I talked to her about the Yankees’ 13-2 win against the Orioles she shook her head.

“You think they could save a couple of runs for tonight.”

“Jeez, aren’t you happy they won?”

“Eh, they shot their wad.”

I thought about her last night when the Yanks scored a single run, knowing that she was watching the game going, “See, I told you so.”

Thing is, I’ve thought the same thing before when the Yanks have scored a ton of runs–save some for tomorrow!–even though I know it’s neurotic thinking. One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other, right? I mulled it over as I lay in bed last night wondering what the numbers say. But then I thought, well, I’m sure my co-worker doesn’t think the reverse is true. I’m sure she wasn’t watching the game last night thinking, “Welp, they only scored one run tonight, tomorrow they’ll score ten.”

The Yanks didn’t score ten runs tonight against the Mets but they did score seven and it was enough for the win. A.J. Burnett wasn’t super but he got out of a bases loaded, no out, fix in the first inning allowing just two runs to score. Russell Martin tied it with a two-run homer and later on Mark Teixeira put them ahead for good with a two-run home run of his own. Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez also hit solo shots, and David Robertson got the Yanks out of a first and third, one out jam in the seventh with the tying run at the plate.

The crowd was subdued, the game was under three hours, and for one night, there was no angst in the Bronx. But there might be some tomorrow afternoon…you never know, right?

Final Score: Yanks 7, Mets 3.


[Photo Credit: Mike Stobe/Getty Images]

Categories:  1: Featured  Bronx Banter  Game Recap  Yankees

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9 comments

1 thelarmis   ~  May 21, 2011 10:38 pm

cubbies!!!

the schedule off to the right isn't updated...

2 RIYank   ~  May 21, 2011 11:40 pm

Huh, no baseball on in bars here. Just boring basketball.
Well, looks like everything went well -- Belth, you must trust in D-Rob! And the Cubbies hung a ton of runs on the Sox' pen, awesome.

3 OldYanksFan   ~  May 22, 2011 8:13 am

Considering we just passed the 25% of the season mark, it's amazing how tight the AL East is. And I don't mean just the top. The LAST place team only 4 games out? Wow!

The HRs are great. GREAT! However, it can't make up for our lack of 'traditional' RISP. We have already lost a number of very close games where we batted well under .200 in RISP and left tons of runners on. While there are always games we 'should have won' and also lucky games 'we should have lost' (extra innings in Baltimore), there have already been far to many games we really, REALLY should have won. Certainly the first Mets game is on that list.

And we can't blame the pitching. HRs or no, we won't win 94 games with our current RISP performace. The coaching staff needs to get these guys to be more selective, shorten their swings, and do whatever else it takes to NOT make an out when we have RISP. Swisher is pressing. Jeter is pressing (but gtting a bit more comfortable). Same for ARod. When these guys press, just hitting the ball back up the middle never happens. It's the ole '5 RBI in this AB swing' or nothing, and of course, it ends up being nothing.

We are not hitting too many HRs. That's just silly. But our performance with RISP (when behind or tied) is going to lose us the division. This is not SSS. This is a definite trend. It needs to be addressed by the FO/Girardi.

4 Alex Belth   ~  May 22, 2011 10:16 am

Yeah, D Rob. Damn!

5 RIYank   ~  May 22, 2011 10:25 am

[3] I don't think so. The low avg. with RISP is just small sample size. The homers reflect a real underlying hitting ability of the team. So I predict the offense will be better in the second quarter of the season, in terms of total run production.

6 weeping for brunnhilde   ~  May 22, 2011 11:23 am

Girardi is invoking "pretty good pitching" and "some nasty weather" in partial explanation of this team's piss-poor offense?

7 rbj   ~  May 22, 2011 11:33 am

Offense is down for most teams this season. BA w/ RISP is down for most teams, I think. (what does it look like for most teams this year?) It's not necessarily weather or anything, I think it has to do with the 1990s, early 2000s. Offenses were so good & pitching so crappy that teams devoted more energy to developing good pitching & defense. This is the result.

8 weeping for brunnhilde   ~  May 22, 2011 12:37 pm

[7] It's a good result, if you ask me. I never liked all that nonsense. I don't even like the DH.

I do think, however, that long swings render a team more vulnerable to better pitching and that hitters should be less willing to strike out.

Mattingly struck out 35 times in a season. Yes, he was a great hitter but that's not the difference. The difference is that hitters' approach has changed so dramatically.

It's just super frustrating to see all those ducks left on the pond when a ground ball up the middle or even a little flare somewhere could equal two runs.

9 RIYank   ~  May 22, 2011 1:00 pm

[8] I like change. We've had the Bombs Away, high scoring era, and now it will be fun to move into a lower-scoring period. I don't particularly prefer either, intrinsically.
I dunno about the other part. I remember a couple of years ago when Rob was horrible with RISP, Alex (and maybe K-Long) told him he should be thinking about swinging harder, and he went with it and started doing much better. In general I'm just kind of skeptical about the long run efficacy of 'approach'. Just hit the damn thing.

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