I strongly believe in this philosophy, which is why, regardless of the outcome, Leyland having Verlander throw a bullpen session and be unavailable for last night’s game, was moronic.

Maybe that’s what he meant when asking who was tighter, Nova’s arm or Girardi? Lots of other winning teams played a hunch at least with their bench and it worked. Girardi not using his was either tooptimism with his flat starters, distrust of his bench or an indictment of Cashman’s (or his own perhaps)judgment in assembling a productive roster. In any case, Joe’s gonna get flogged today and I can’t say he doesn’t deserve some of it.

lets hope that last night, with Montero sitting on the bench while Martin flailed about helplessly, was this decade’s “Mo sitting in the Kingdome bullpen” moment

For me, this was they key: Zero offensive bench moves.

We all spit up our whiskey last night seeing the merry-go-round of pitchers, but Girardi ended up foxing us there. One run over seven innings is the kind of thing you sign up for in a bullpen.

Zero offensive bench moves. The nine guys who started in the batting order all finished in it. We went down leaving Montero, Chavez, Nunez, Dickerson and Jones as unfired bullets in the gun.

Any of whom would have been an improvement over Martin at any time. Some of whom would have been credible improvements over Swisher late in the game.

If we’d lost a game with Mariano sitting on the bench unused, Girardi would catch hell. Why did a major league team, struggling to score in an elimination game, basically act as if it had no offensive bench at all?

Rotation, ugh, that’s going to be a huge project.

Scherzer may be for real, and maybe Fister has turned a corner in his career. But Seattle just traded him for a bag of peanuts, I can’t call him flat good.

Scherzer wasn’t good this year, but he was coming out throwing 99 with movement last night. for one inning that’s gonna be effective.

I don’t think Valverde is good, you don’t think Valverde is good, no one thinks Valverde is good.

But as flawed a stat as the save is, shit man 51-51 is what it is. Wetteland had a knack for pulling that third out out of his ass too.

And I do think that getting shut down by Scherzer, who just wasn’t very good this year, particularly on the road, was pretty terrible.

First off thanks to the whole Banter crew, I wasn’t on the game threads as much as I’d like this year but everyone here continues to out-do themselves day after day.

I think I’m more sad about this one than anything else. I’m pissed at A-Rod and Tex, but I feel more like “they just made big pitches.” And they did, I know we all had visions dancing in our heads of Yankee Stadium rattling Fister, Scherzer, Benoit, and Valverde…but I think at some point we all need to acknowledge that those guys are ya know, GOOD. This wasn’t getting shutdown by the likes of Paul Byrd or Kenny Rogers. These guys can pitch, whether we wanna admit it or not.

But 97 wins, beating The Greatest Team of All Time for the AL East, Jeter 3,000, Mo 602, the Birth of Jesus, 16 wins from Nova, MVP-type years from Granderson and Robbie, Jeter’s comeback in the second half. Yeah the 2011 season wasn’t too terrible.