Anybody have a guess about what the Dodgers will do with five starting outfielders?

But seriously . . . Manny will start everyday in left field and the other four will battle it out for the other two spots according to Joe Torre's whims. Likely Pierre and Jones splitting center and Kemp and Ethier splitting right, which is the wrong way to do it (Jones and Pierre should be launched into the sun, but nuking the $43.5 million they're owed beyond this year is something the Dodgers are likely reluctant to do). Before adding Manny, Kemp was the only one to play every day this month, and he did so splitting time between right and center, so that confusion just gets compressed into two spots instead of three.

I'd say the Yankees have done better, because even a pouty Manny is really good. Sox at best stayed even while NY improved. Unless the Boston clubhouse was about to explode. But even the Bronx Zoo won back to back.

also, i am hoping the combination of pudge and molina (who i'm sure will be catching moose) will halt the angels running game which always seemed to be an issue for the yanks

10 I read that too.

4 games against the Angels. ugh.

That's really all I have.

Go Yankees

Man, it's going to be a long night/series, isn't it?

Andy's pitching like Ponson. Fortunately, he still has that pick-off move. If Ponson had that, he'd be...
He'd suck slightly less.

All right, Team, let's score some runs and give Andy a breather.

No. We are in a hurry to get back onto the field.

Love,
The Yankee Line-Up

The selfish bastard. Glad to be rid of him.

-RSN

Gotta love NE sports fans.

I swear, I thought that was a harmless popfly.

Damn.

And speaking of fast, I thought Chone Figgins could score from second on a single. Is this the first time he failed to advance to third???

I also noted (again, half-jokingly) that the Yankees must lead baseball in pitchers suspended for not hitting batters.

Constant hard-hit balls that find holes, stolen bases, runs.

Every fucking time we see them it's just like this.

;-)

It's gonna be fun to watch Rasner get lit up on Sunday when I visit the old park for the last time.

damn do the yanks and andy just have to suck it up and save giese in case snacks explodes tomorrow?

Not that any of this is in the slightest unexpected, but nevertheless, I feel ill.

Can't we just forfeit against these guys in the future, spare us all a lot of humiliation and grief?

This is why it kills me to see our guys swing and miss so much.

Should be some kind of a clinic they put on.

Because that's basically what's happened with Manny. But it's nothing new for Boston, they've run plenty of great players out of town without any remorse- Boggs, Clemens, Lynn...

Then again, compared with the Yankees' policy of letting star players stay on, to the detriment of the team...

Anaheim Angels have 656 K in 107 games this season.
NY Yankees have 625 K in 107 games this season.

By the way, the Yankees have the second fewest team K in the AL and the second fewest in MLB (only Seattle has fewer Ks).

And the Angels have more team strikeouts (656) than the Yankees (625). So the Yankees put the motherfucker in play a lot more than the Angels do.

So, to summarize, the Angels do not put the ball in play more and therefore that is not why they win.

Let's lift Andy now and let him have a do-over on Sunday instead of Rasner. Let Snacks pitch the rest of this game and then DFA him and call up IPK for tomorrow night.

The Yanks, btw, hit best in low leverage situations....

Let's see,

Tex OPS+ for his career: 131
Mantle OPS+ for his career: 172

Um, yeah, not so much Ken. Ken might want to get out a reoord book or something.

One bright side about getting blown away by the Angels is we wont have to see Krod perform an exorcism on the mound after each save.

I don't really know what to make of that stat. But clearly it means the team isn't as anti-clutch as some people make it...

As I grew, though, I noticed that Sterling and Kay didn't really like each other, and soon after Kay left the booth I stopped enjoying the radio broadcasts. Waldman is a fan girl and Steiner was the opposite, barely interested in the game. But I suppose I'm just remembering the good-ole-days.

if you assume "clutch" is meaningful, stands for a single skill, then that pair of facts makes little sense.

"leverage", if you want a single-# clutchiness index, is the best bet. but I don't think the people who came up with it believe it measures an ability.

American League

RISP: .270 .355 .412 .767
RISP, 2 outs: .242 .349 .377 .726

Yankees
RISP: .263 .349 .385 .735
RISP, 2 outs: .270 .369 .388 .757

So, the Yankees seem to hit worse than the league with RISP, but better than the league with RISP/2 outs.

What does this all mean? Probably nothing significant.

For the record, I'm no Pudge fan; I think his 2008 season is a bit fluky and he will return to his 2006/2007 numbers. Still better than Molina, but I don't have to enjoy it...

Of course, as I type this, Vlad frogs up a play and Melky scores. Still, a walk, single, double, triple and HR...and 2 runs.

And yet...

bad andy makes me want to kick puppies.

This has got to be KILLING Weepingforbrunhilde!

i fucking hate the fucking angels.

134 me either. it is madenning.

135 and what does snacks make you want to kick?

Similarly, they have scored fewer runs, and that would include speed, at least in part, situational hitting, etc. In any case, they have 10 more SB and the same number of CS as the Yankees. I hardly think that 10 SB is what is making this team win so many more games.

in any case, i can only stand teh suck so long and no longer ... see y'all tomorrow night ...

They are slowly driving me i-n-s-a-n-e.

What's up with Cano?

Before tonight, their run differential was almost identical to the Yankees.

Your consistency argument has some merit.

Girardi has to seriously consider moving Jeter out of the #2 slot against right handers.

I'm telling you, they have some kind of voodoo--certainly whenever they play us.

They seem an unstoppable force.

Anything else?

That's what will happen with instant replay. People are now afraid of the change to the game. But once it's installed, and the game is decided by the plays and not the umps, people will really be grateful.

Like I said, your consistency argument makes some sense--fewer peaks and valleys, where the valleys tend to be sure losses.

http://tinyurl.com/6mjtug

The comments section, in particular, is pretty nasty and amusing, alternating between people attacking Schilling and people attacking Manny. Politics is also thrown in for good measure. Not too many moderators, either, as Theo is cussed out in one comment with the profanity untouched.

My willingness to give in on the issue is more a statement of how awful the umps are, not how grateful I will be.

I don't watch Futball, so I don't know how the NFL does it. But the technololgy is there to make calls very quickly and with great precision.

Maybe MLB would solve the problem, but really, do you trust the idiots who run MLB to come up with an efficient system?

Football's problem is that they have too many judgment calls, even on simple "was he down" kinds of plays.

In baseball you probably can't do it on force outs. But YES can consistently get a good angle on whether a tag was made before a runner touches a base. For plays at the plate, I think this is essential. And it can be done in a similar way- manager calls a challenge, it goes to the booth and in the time it takes for managers to argue, it's all over.

IMO, the delay in the game to get a call right is worth it...as long as it's reserved for the really important calls. And it is.

Also, all football stadiums show replays of the previous play, and all teams have an army of coaches in the booth watching replays, so that the head coach gets the info in time before the next play. Even then, in the NFL a coach has 45 seconds or so between each play to make his decision.

Despite its slow pace, baseball does not have that much time elapse before a play is called time in. When would the coach have to challenge by? Before the next pitch? Before the next batter is announced (obviously, the result of a prior play could dictate who might be sent out to bat)?

Instant replay in baseball would be much more complicated it seems on teh surface.

If the IR ump agrees with the call on the field, nothing happens. If the call is wrong, he tells the home plate ump, who has an earpiece, and the homeplate ump overrules the call. That way, everything is the same except wrong calls. It will NEVER take more then 30 seconds for the 5th ump to make the right call.

You can even have additional techs who can 'browse' the play and show still shots that show the play clearly.

It should ALL be completely transparent. The only thing WE SEE on the field, is the home plate ump occasionally overruling calls... even his own.

Seems very counterintuitive, because this year it seems like every time he swings t the first pitch, he makes an out (but he doesn't, actually).

We get the benefit of watching the plays multiple times in slow motion, often overlapping well into the subsequent AB. That delay would have to be factored in for the 5th ump to keep up with the action.

It really would significantly delay the games.

Now, if they cut the time in between innings by 30 seconds, maybe we can talk.

I'm not too excited about instant replay as currently envisioned. It's only for fair and foul calls, and in or out of the park. Those are rarely controversial.

Meanwhile, you spend 200 posts earlier today defending Melky's prolonged suckitude. (That said, Melky did have three hits today, so you win, I guess.)

Again, in the time YES showed the play the first time, the 5th ump would have already seen it from 8 angles and made a call. Of course, you don't always need 8 angles. Sometimes the first or second camera shows conclusive results.

Again, imagine having multiple techs helping on by browsing 'their' camera and freezing the frame that shows the play. The ump would be the official, butthe techs would be doing all the work.

It could be sorta fun and add to the drama to wait for a moment or three after each play for the big scoreboard to flash "out" or "safe."

Your plan would entail setting up numerous fixed cameras throughout all the stadium in the league, and probably a few moving cameras, all operated by an army of league employees.

This is all doable, but highly, highly unlikely.

MLB is a multi-billion dollar institution. You are not going to say this is a bad idea because they might need more camera and a few more personel, are you?

You would need to have cameras operating independent of the networks, and ideally you would want to have the same coverage in every stadium. And you would need a good number of personnel to run the system as seamlessly as you envision.

And the cost of all of this would be born directly by the consumer, unlike the NFL replay system which is outsourced to the networks.

So yeah, I would be hesitant. Frankly, I just don't think it work, at least as you think it would.

Anyway, what were the circumstances that mitigated Britton's suckitude?

http://www.halosheaven.com/2008/6/14/552054/luck-or-the-residue-of-des

Dustin Moseley and Chris Bootcheck, two of the team's relievers most responsible for the large numbers of runs against, were booted to Salt Lake early in the season (one for John Lackey). The other issue is the odd placement of injuries; the team struggled offensively while they had two of their starters suppressing runs at an unreal rate. Much of the rest of it worked for the same reason the Snakes got their weird-e-do pythag differential last year, namely, Scioscia putting Bootcheck and Moseley in games in which the Halos were already well behind.

Condolences.