Half to walk Ichiro hear....one more run and it's ballgame.

Damn it.

[111] Guess they forgot to wake up Girardi...why does he even bother to sit in the dugout?

oh no. what the fuck is up w/ all these goddamn leadoff doubles?! FUCK!!! : /

[111] Rampant homophony!

Man, he calls 'em late.

Grab your glove, Choad.

[115] That's just awful...I type so fast, I outrun my brain!

I don't think 10-5 is so great when 6 of those games were against the Astros and Dbacks.

Why a LHP ever throws Granderson anything that isn't a breaker is beyond me ...

Bunt and run. Hit and run. Steal. Whatever. Get Curtis to 2nd.

Hey Country Joe ... the strike zone begins at the knees, not where the socks end.

[121] Nope...Curtis is just fine right where he is.

Some interesting thoughts by Goldman here:
http://tinyurl.com/35sycde

And he drops this nugget:
MONTERO ALERT
He’s waking up. In his last 10 games, the 20-year-old is hitting .342/.375/.711 with three home runs in 38 at-bats, boosting his overall rates for the month to .299/.337/.540.

Now Lee is on pace to pitch nine innings.

As the season goes on, Cervelli's offense gets harder and harder to look forward to.

[126] Cervelli has hit his way back to being a nice defensive backup.

The radio fed online is lagging a god bit behind the game. That combined with Lee's clever strategy to have every other Yankee line out hard on the second pitch of the AB means that just about the time I post a comment the Yankees half of the inning is already over!

HUUUGHES!!!

[128] The hard line puts stopped in the third inning.

[127] yep. The thought of him starting more than about 40 to 50 games is a bit frightening.

[130] hard for me to tell on the radiophone. The m's announcers made it sound like Jeter struck the ball pretty hard.

I get the feeling this is the last inning for sir Phil.

[132] It was a soft liner to first...not hit well at all.

Can anyone tell me the status of Gritner?

No, don't like this. No IBB!
I guess they figure they can't score enough runs if even Bradley scores.

[135] Day-to-day with a bruised forearm.

This game sucks.

Oh, Jesus.

Blargh.

So much for this duel of Aces.

And that folks is the ballgame...five runs to the Mariners is frightening. I really hope the Yankees haven't managed to screw up Hughes. This hasn't been the best year for organizational decisions, so hopefully this isn't another one that backfires.

Well, Girardi's decided to pack it in ... NOgan's warming in the pen.

not good phil (better do better on sunday)

goddamn it. they score even w/out the leadoff man getting on.

fuck this noize

Leaving Hughes in this ballgame was pure stupidity. It was obvious he had nothing today. In fact, he probably shouldn't have come out for the sixth.

Joe Girardi is remarkable in his ability to completely mismanage just about every game in which the Yankees do not dominate. Some day the Yankees will hire a competent manager. I just hope they still have the same talent when they finally get around to doing so.

holy mother of fucking bullshit.

why the fuck did we have to skip hughes?! : /

(i know why...)

[141] if the Yankees screwed up Hughes by skipping him one start, then he's a fragile flower indeed.

did eiland go out for any meetings tonight?

[147] Pitcher's are a creature of habit...if his lack of command lingers another game, who knows if it will start to effect his approach and lessen his confidence.

Skipping Hughes is one thing, but not being able to see that he was done after the fifth is the real problem. Not only did the Yankees skip him, but then Girardi rewards Hughes by leaving him in to give up 7 runs. Pretty pathetic.

[147] As I seem to recall asking you once before, not so long ago ... why do you bother?

Well, this has been fucking delightful. Cliff Lee, Cowboy Joe West, and Phil Hughes looking like dogshit right from the start.

I had low hopes for this game. Nice that Granderson can battle Lee the way he has while the rest of the lineup has gone down like lambs.

Not for nothing, but sometimes it is just amazing that Posada was ever a catcher. That at bat in the fourth, I think, was unforgivable. Which - for him - followed an absolutely terrific at bat where he worked a walk (which Al and Mikey missed completely, as they were too busy yakking about nothing) (that's added to the joy - as I've mentioned, I find it is absolute torture when Al is in the booth).

But Posada gets up there, our pitcher is obviously laboring, the first two guys go in order, Lee's pitch count is not bad at all, but also not insanely low, and Jorge swings at the first damn pitch - which isn't a good pitch - and lobs a feckless fly ball straight to the right fielder.

FUCK Posada. It's not like this hasn't been a team-wide shitty effort, but you just don't do that. Particularly if you're a fucking catcher.

All we have to do is clone Swisher, and we'll be fine.

Unfortunately, it's 7-2, not 4-2.

Oh, Swish hasn't been no bitch, neither.

9 Nick Swishers > 1 Cliff Lee

[149] as long as I xan remember pitchers have been skipped or had their starts bumped up or back a day because of the schedule or a rain out or an injury. Rarerly if ever do I remember it causing permanent physical or psychological damage. Heck, Stengel used ro Jimmy with the rotation all the time and he's in the hall of fame. To worry that a pitcher has somehow been broken because he was skipped and then had an off start strikes me as a bit hysterical.

Now, on a strictly semantic level you are correct, we don't *know* for sure, and of course we never will.

goddamn Fat Liar hits a 3-run job. fucking cocksucker.

baseball really sucks today

ichiro is the coolest kid in mlb.

[151] like I said before, I don't post as often as I used to. I just like to poke the hornets nest once and awhile door the fun of it.

[157] Hughes velocity and command both were off today. He had his worst start against the worst offense in baseball. Is that all a coincidence. I don't think so. If I had to bet, I don't think the impact will be long term, but after seeing what happened with Joba, I am not so sure.

Dusty Baker let his pitcher make the third out with a runner in scoring position. Then pulled said pitcher immediately afterward. Weird.

[158] On that topic, how the HELL has Fat Liar gotten off the scrap heap?

That guy was so damn cooked, I really thought we could put a stake in him.

Must be better milkshakes.

i smell double digits....for seattle.

Hey, Boone. Use the Fucking piece of leather on your hand.

This game is unpleasant.

[163] fertility drugs?

[162] Could you imagine William if this team actually had a horrifically horrible manager, like Baker. Hahahahaha.

Don't send paramedics, send the coroner.

here comes the double digits. one swing...

[167] Just David being Manny.

[161] wondering if hughes is off his game because his routine was broken is one thing. Hand-wringing about whether he's now "screwed up" is a bit to dramatic. Moreover, I think that it is just as likely that tonight's start was a coincidence. Just like his absolute worst start came against the dreadful Orioles last year, and that was on regular rest.

As a wiser man than i once said, you really can't predict baseball.

[168] Girardi just did something similar with Burnett. He's no Baker, but he isn't far off.

I think Teix's year long funk is due to spending too much time thinking about Phil's innings limits and possibly needing to be skipped a few times.
; )

[171] You can't predict it, but it's fun to try. Suggesting Hughes was screwed up really isn't that dramatic...concluding that it will for a significant period is. I am really not comfortable with giving away one game, but hopefully that's the extent.

supposition time

Actually, I just can't let that go.

Do you realize how unfathomably awful Baker is???

That guy is like Torre, but far more vigorous, and therefore able to do even more damage.

Looks like everyone has packed it in for the night, but I just noticed that Al is way easier to listen to if I shred paper in the background.

[176] Baker is pretty awful. He tends to give the worst hitter in the lineup the leadoff spot. Hates guys who "clog up the basepaths" with walks. And leaves his bench players on the bench for weeks at a time, meaning they're so rusty you can hardly pry them off the pine when you need them. I'll give Torre credit on that one: he at least knew you had to give the scrubs a few at-bats a week if you wanted them to be useful.

I really hope the Yankees haven’t managed to screw up Hughes. This hasn’t been the best year for organizational decisions, so hopefully this isn’t another one that backfires.

Ah, I see, i obviously misunderstood your tone, diction and use of verb tense. When I read "managed to screw him up", using the present infinitive after the perfected tense, which seems to imply a progressive, ongoing or even perfected state of being, I thought you were wondering aloud if the damage done by a possible backfiring organization decision was long-lasting.

But really you were saying " I hope that the decision to skip him was not to blame for tonight's poor performance, even though it would be dramatic to conclude from one poor start that decision to skip Hughes once in the rotation has done lasting or permanent damage."

I'm sorry I didn't pick up on the intended effect of your post.

Dear Brian Cashman,

I understand why you signed CHoP.

It wasn't a bad idea, I understand the reasoning behind it.

But part of the reasoning behind it is that it would be easy to let him go.

Well, that time has come.

He's been terrible.

And not only has he been terrible, but his velocity is down and his breaking stuff has hung all year.

Experiments are nice, but it's time to move on.

-CoB

p.s. Please throw Boone Logan in a sack and drown him in the Hudson.

KTHXBYE!!!

[179] Semantics, shmemantics, ha.

C;mon ... I wanna Stick Trick!!!

[182] Well, Lee was nice enough to give Nick 2 crushable balls, but Nick didn't want 'em ...

Wow, besides Swish and Granderson, the Yanks might as well have asked Cliff Lee if they can do anything else to make him more comfortable. Not exactly stout resistance tonight.

[179] Can you translate that? To clairfy my tone, it was really more sarcasm than all that smart stuff you mentioned. Although I don't think Hughes entire season has been submarined, I do wonder how long it will take for him to get back on track and hope the Yankees ultimate plan for him is a little more informed than some of their recent decisions. I am not sure what the verb tense is most suitable for explaining those thoughts, so I'll leave that to your interpretation.

[180] There has been a spike in Park's hit ratios, he’s striking out more batters and walking less than he did last year. FWIW, he’s given up less line drives (19% down from 24%), less ground balls (40% down from 44%), more fly balls (41% up from 33%). Should be noted that there hasn’t been a drop in his velocity in any of his pitches, though I would think that he should probably select his pitches a bit better.

Holy crap. Can they do it again?

Those three extra runs Girardi let Hughes give up really look big now.

[186] Is that compared to his entire 2009, or just his time as a reliever?

Huh.

The plot thickens.

Ya never, ever know.

Why did those last two batters go down on three pitches or whatever it was?

Wtf?

well that sucked

holy crap dd you just see the bomb Votto hit?!

Lidge gave up a 2 out, 3 run bottom of the 9th homer to knot the game at 6. Joey Votto. Not that anyone gives a shit about the Reds-Phillies. : )

[192] Because Granderson had overperformed massively for a Granderson-Cliff Lee matchup and because the last batter was Chad Huffman.

At least the 9th was something different than bringing Cliff his pipe and slippers, but up until then, geez.

[189] Entire 2009. As a starter, 3 of his 7 starts had a game score over 50.

Game going to extras on that Votto homer. He's so underrated. I keep thinking his numbers are going to have to come back to earth, but they never do.

[186] Gee. That almost makes him sound like he hasn't deserved the beatings he gotten. Still, something seems off to me, like there's something missing from the stats you chose.

Oh, wait, I know what it was.

HR/9

2009: .54
2010: 2.35

He's given up more homeruns this year than last, in 1/4 of the innings.

When your flyball rate is up AND you're tater-tastic, that's a big bad problem.

[198] Also, I would say his velocity certainly *is* down, when you compare it to his velocity as a *reliever* in 2009. The fact that he threw less hard as a starter last year shouldn't have any influence on how hard we should expect him to throw this year.

[199] I'm looking @ pitch data, from his bullpen stint in 09, his velocity's pretty consistent this year and last.