Comments on: Bombs Away

By: RIYank

RIYank — Sun, 22 May 2011 17:00:08 +0000

[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.

By: weeping for brunnhilde

weeping for brunnhilde — Sun, 22 May 2011 16:37:13 +0000

[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.

By: rbj

rbj — Sun, 22 May 2011 15:33:52 +0000

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.

By: weeping for brunnhilde

weeping for brunnhilde — Sun, 22 May 2011 15:23:35 +0000

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

By: RIYank

RIYank — Sun, 22 May 2011 14:25:47 +0000

[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.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Sun, 22 May 2011 14:16:05 +0000

Yeah, D Rob. Damn!

By: OldYanksFan

OldYanksFan — Sun, 22 May 2011 12:13:11 +0000

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.

By: RIYank

RIYank — Sun, 22 May 2011 03:40:43 +0000

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.

By: thelarmis

thelarmis — Sun, 22 May 2011 02:38:22 +0000

cubbies!!!

the schedule off to the right isn’t updated…