Monthly Archives: August 2010

The Yankees won last night’s game 7-6, but that’s kind of like saying the plot of The Sun Also Rises is “a guy watches some bullfights.” I really don’t know where to start with this particular thrill ride, which, around 10 PM, I thought the Yankees had absolutely no shot at winning. (I wasn’t far wrong). In fact, I didn’t really think they had a shot until they actually took the lead and put Mariano Rivera on the mound, and then right away the first batter he faced hit a triple and I still wasn’t so sure. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. They say when you don’t know where to start, you should start at the beginning.

The Yankees were facing Cliff Lee, who, in case you’d forgotten, is mind-bogglingly awesome. Since arriving in Texas he’s walked three batters – two of those intentionally. (Though why the hell Cliff Lee was intentionally walking anybody I can’t imagine). He’s allowed nine walks all season, which makes me think of Joe DiMaggio and that crazy 1941 season where he only struck out 13 times. I’ve had a platonic baseball-crush on Lee ever since he made that sick behind-the-back catch in Game 1 of last fall’s World Series and then shrugged it off with Steve-McQueen cool; I’ve also been looking at him as a bit superhuman, and so I didn’t expect much from the Yankees last night. Especially since Marcus Thames was batting third*.

And, against Cliff Lee, they indeed didn’t do much… except they had some good at-bats, and made him work (though of course not actually walk anybody), which is often really the only thing you can do when facing someone like Lee. The Rangers didn’t beat around the bush, starting their scoring in the 1st with a Michael Young homer, as Javier Vazquez continued to struggle with both his velocity and his location. The Yankees evened things up in the 4th, when Marcus Thames singled and A-Rod doubled him home and I thought, not for the first nor last time over a four-hour span, okay maybe I’ve been a little hard on Marcus Thames; but it didn’t take. The Rangers scored two more in the bottom of the inning (two-run Mitch Moreland single, off the glove of Lance “not Mark Teixeira” Berkman at first), and three more in the fifth (single, single, botched run-down, double, fielder’s choice, single), and when Javy slumped off the mound to make way for Sergio Mitre it was 6-1 and I was thinking about how I should frame the loss in the recap.

But Sergio Mitre was just fine, actually – 1.2 hitless, scoreless innings – and it turned out the Yankees were only mostly dead (“mostly dead is slightly alive!”). In the same way they used to have some success against aces like Pedro Martinez back in the day, they took a bunch of pitches, fouled others off, kept scuffling, and got Lee out of the game after 6.1 innings – which is, by Cliff Lee standards, quite early; as Michael Kay pointed out, Lee had pitched 8 innings or more in ten straight starts. The comeback trail began in the sixth, when Derek Jeter tripled –  seems like it’s been a long time since I wrote that – and scored on a rare Cliff Lee wild pitch, but I don’t think the Rangers were exactly quaking in their boots at that point. The next inning, though, things started to get a little interesting: Robinson Cano doubled, and Austin Kearns singled, hard, and when Austin Kearns creams one like that it’s a pretty good sign that Cliff Lee is probably starting to get a little tired. (It was 100 degrees in Texas last night, which couldn’t have helped any). Lance Berkman hit a ground-rule double, and then Brett Gardner singled, and suddenly it was a decently close 6-4 game. The Texas bullpen is very good, though, and the Yankees were relying on Kerry Wood for two innings, so I remained unimpressed except in a vague, it’s-nice-they’re-showing-some-fight-however-futile sort of way.

Like Sergio Mitre before him, Kerry Wood exceeded my expectations, although he did add a little spice, in the form of two straight singles in the seventh before he induced a Nelson Cruz double play. But he kept things from getting any worse, and so when Marcus Thames led off the 8th inning with a sonic boom of a home run off Frank Francisco – huh, perhaps I really was a little hard on that guy – it was suddenly a one-run affair. Cano and Posada walked… but then Austin Kearns, who giveth and taketh away, ground into a DP of his own and you had to figure that was probably that.

In the top of the ninth inning, Lance Berkman walked and, being rather less swift than a puma these days, Curtis Granderson came on to run for him. And he drew a lot of attention from the hard-throwing Rangers reliever of the moment, Neftali Feliz, but he still hadn’t gotten anywhere when Brett Gardner singled him over. Derek Jeter was getting ready to bunt (grrrrr), but Feliz — perhaps overcome with admiration for Jeter’s selflessness in being willing to sacrifice himself for his team! — threw a wild pitch and both Granderson and Gardner advanced, no bunt necessary. Jeter then bent over, picked a four-leaf clover, and hit a sneaky seeing-eye hopper of a single that came within an inch of being caught by both the pitcher and the second baseman before trickling into the outfield. Tie game. Nick Swisher struck out, but that brought up Marcus Thames, who singled off of Alexi Ogando, scoring Gardner and giving the Yankees their first lead of the game.

You know, it’s possible I’ve been a little hard on Marcus Thames.

Anyway, the one-run lead meant Mariano Rivera for the bottom of the ninth. I’d say he was looking for redemption after the previous night’s rare blown save but, really, Mariano Rivera doesn’t need any redemption; he’s got redemption coming out of his ears. He did, however, give everyone a bit of a start by immediately giving up a whopping triple to Elvis Andrus.

Michael Young flew out, just not quiiiiite far enough to score the run.

Josh Hamilton grounded directly into Rivera’s glove.

Vlad Guerrero took one whole pitch before swinging from his heels and sending the ball to Alex Rodriguez, who made a nice play and tossed him out by several entire feet.

If the Yanks and Rangers meet down the road in October, it could be quite a series. In the interests of being prepared, I recommend you start discussing blood pressure medication with your doctor sooner rather than later.

—

*There’s no doubt that the Yankees miss Mark Teixeira – that lineup hasn’t been looking all that awe-inspiring the last few days. (Still, to the people who are actually upset that Teixeira is taking several days off to be with his newborn child and wife, I can only say: you’ll feel differently about this down the road, once you’ve matured a bit, and passed puberty.) Ken Singleton made the extremely good point that, as with the Bereavement List, when players leave for the birth of a child, their team should be able to call up a replacement. Teams would therefore feel less of a squeeze when a player like Teixeira does the right thing and spends a couple of days with his family, and there would be less pressure on the player himself to rush back immediately. Paternity leave: get on it, MLBPA.

Yanks haven’t played their best ball lately. They’ve got Cliff Lee to deal with tonight.

Hang tough, fellas. Go git ’em.

Jon Weisman has a good piece on Joe Torre’s future (and legacy) in Los Angeles:

Nearly three seasons into his post-Yankees tenure on the West Coast, Torre remains more a baseball manager than a Dodgers manager, more an ambassador and icon than an integral part of the City of Angels.

This is reflective of two things, neither of them particularly damning toward Torre. In certain respects, Torre has been a welcome relief in Los Angeles, steering the Dodgers to the most success since the Tommy Lasorda days, leading with a combination of class, calm and clarity not witnessed since Walter Alston. More than two decades since the team’s last World Series title, more than one decade since the organization was last thought of as noble, these are not qualities to be taken for granted.

But presuming the Dodgers don’t rally from third place in the National League West today into the World Series two months from now, the aftershocks of a Torre departure will be felt in Los Angeles far more modestly than in the baseball community at large.

Man, the Joe Torre Era in the Bronx seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?

[Photo Credit: UK Guardian]

Stay Blue…

I went to the movies for the first time this summer a few days ago. Saw Dinner for Schmucks. I didn’t expect much and wasn’t disappointed. I smiled  a lot and thought this limp, bland movie was a fine diversion. I wouldn’t see it again, though on second thought I’ll probably sit through pieces of it many times once it reaches heavy-rotation on cable.

I didn’t get a good belly laugh out of it and when the end credits rolled I didn’t remember a thing that had just happened. 

I think that most of the recent comedies by the Will Ferrell-Judd Apatow Mafia are lacking but there also usually have that one crack-up scene that makes it worth it.

Like this foul-mouthed gem from The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (warning–if you offend easily, skip this):

Dig this fun piece from the L.A. Times Magazine on 50 different kinds of Soda Pop. 

RC was Boss, right Cappy?

I Love this Town…

[Picture by Bags]

Wallace Mathews on Jorge Posada’s latest injury:

…Girardi dropped the bomb after the game.

“He told me the throw he made [Monday] irritated his shoulder a little bit,” the manager said. “I don’t think it’s anything serious, but I gotta be careful. When Jorgie tells you something’s irritated, it’s usually irritated.”

Jorgie told the media nothing, because he bolted for the first team bus out of Rangers Ballpark before any reporters got into the locker room.

So until about 4:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, we’ll have to make do with Girardi’s assessment of Posada’s fitness. “I could have used him in an emergency,” said Girardi, a description for which the eighth-inning situation presumably did not qualify.

But considering how injury-riddled Posada’s 2010 season has been so far, the real emergency may be going on in his shoulder. Already, he has spent time on the DL with a broken foot, had hamstring problems and missed several games with recurring soreness caused by a cyst behind his left knee.

Plus, he missed nearly the entire 2008 season after having surgery on the very same shoulder. So when Girardi says Posada’s shoulder is “a little cranky,” you naturally start to wonder exactly how cranky, and for how many games.

Will the Yankees hold it together? Can they stay healthy enough to defend their title come October?

The Yankees are wary of Cliff Lee reports George King:

“He uses all four quadrants of the strike zone and puts the ball wherever he wants it,” said Jorge Posada, a .292 (7-for-24) hitter versus Lee. “He is like (Tom) Glavine but with more speed.”

That was a tough loss last night, what with the Rays and Sox both winning.

Lee tonight makes for a chore. Hey, nobody said it was gunna be easy like Sunday Morning, right?

[Photo Credit: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images]

I knew sooner or later I would have to write about a Mariano loss. When Mariano comes into a game, I turn on the recorder, I turn off the TV and I wait 30 minutes. Then, I check the score, and if he has blown it, I lose it. I don’t lose it out loud anymore, and I don’t act out. But my hands are shaking with anger as I pound the remote control buttons to delete the recording and stew around for hours because I’m too upset to sleep. The days following are tough, and I’d rather do anything than talk about and read about baseball, but you know you can’t avoid it in this day and age. There’s an angry buzz on the subway the next day. Plus the barely contained glee from the Yankee haters. A Mo loss is like a straightjacket for me. The only thing that brings me back is reminding myself (over and over) that he’s already moved past it in time for the next game.

Before Mariano got involved, the Yanks could not get their feet straight tonight and it cost them another very winnable game. Four times awkward footwork turned plays against them and it’s possible all four plays had an impact on runs crossing the plate. Bad AJ showed up briefly to groove four or five fastballs in the sixth and the Rangers bullpen wriggled out of some jams that the Yanks bullpen couldn’t and lost a really tough game 4-3 in ten innings.

The first foot fault, and probably least hurtful, happened when Josh Hamilton skied to center for the first out of the bottom of the fourth. Michael Young liked his chances to take second on Gardner, but I thought Gardner had it lined up perfectly to prevent the extra base. Either he didn’t know Young was tagging or he doesn’t have a lot of confidence in his arm, because he took a loping crow hop before firing the ball in. Young was safe easily. I thought an aggressive throw would have either kept Young at first or nailed him at second. He may have scored anyway on the two out double that followed, but at least the Yanks would have had a slim chance to hold him or make a play at the plate if he was starting from first.

(more…)

Only three teams in baseball have a better record than the American League West-leading Texas Rangers. The Yankees, who have the game’s best record, are of course one of them, which makes this week’s two game set in Arlington both very compelling and simultaneously disappointingly brief. That’s now further complicated by the fact that Mark Teixeira is currently on paternity leave from the team in anticipation of the birth of his third child. So as much as we might like to build up this series, I don’t think we can consider it a true playoff preview.

Still, the Yankees haven’t played the Rangers since the second week of the season, so this will be a chance for Yankee fans–not to mention their players, coaches and scouts–to get a good look at a potential playoff rival. That the Yankees will get, as they’ll be facing the Rangers’ top two starters, July addition Cliff Lee and converted reliever C.J. Wilson, both left-handers. So much for the Yankees “avoiding” Lee when he was traded prior to his scheduled start against them in Seattle just before the All-Star break.

Lee, who starts against Javier Vazquez tomorrow, has made six starts for the Rangers, four of which were dominating (minimum eight innings pitched, maximum two runs allowed, and a total of one walk and one home run allowed against 31 strikeouts). In his other two he also went deep (he’s completed at least eight innings in all six of his Rangers starts), but gave up a few too many runs along the way, taking the loss each time. Surprisingly, Lee has received just 2.5 runs of support on average since joining the Rangers, that after leaving the worst run scoring team in the majors for one of the top four.

Wilson, who faces A.J. Burnett tonight, has been very impressive in his transition to the rotation. He posted a 1.48 ERA in his first seven starts before experiencing a four-start slump (possibly a dead-arm period). After pulling out of that, he posted a 2.54 ERA over his next starts before turning in a three-inning stinker his last time out. Wilson has been hit-lucky (.255 BABIP), but his low line-drive rate suggests that has been a bit more than luck. Still, he leads the AL in walks and is close to doubling his innings total from last year. Wilson wasn’t moved to the bullpen until arriving in the majors in 2005, but entering the year, his career high in innings was the 136 he threw as a 21-year-old minor leaguer in 2002. He enters tonight’s start having thrown 136 1/3 innings this season and one wonders when and if he’s going to hit a wall and what effect that will have on the Rangers’ postseason rotation and postseason chances.

As for Burnett, he was scratched from his start on Sunday due to back spasms, which is a new item in his career-long list of minor aches and pains. Prior to that he had been lit up by the Blue Jays, coughing up seven runs in a disastrous fifth inning on August 2. Since opening the season 4-0 with a 1.99 ERA after six starts, Burnett hasn’t gone more than two starts without a disaster outing and has posted a 6.33 ERA over his last 16 starts, but at least he’s only 33 and signed for three more years. Oy.

With Teixeira away and Robinson Cano out with a cold, Joe Girardi is running out this lineup against the lefty Wilson:

R – Derek Jeter (SS)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
R – Marcus Thames (DH)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
R – Austin Kearns (LF)
S – Lance Berkman (1B)
R – Francisco Cervelli (C)
L – Brett Gardner (CF)
S – Ramiro Peña (2B)

Let’s just say I’m not too optimistic about this game. The bright side is that this is so far from what the Yankees will likely look like in a potential playoff series as to be meaningless beyond tonight.

(more…)

Over at ESPN, dig this on AJ Burnett:

He has eight starts this year where he has given the Yankees less than a 10 percent chance to win, and eight starts where he has given his team at least an 80 percent chance for victory. Amazingly, in every single one of his starts, he has given the Yankees at least a 69 percent chance of winning OR less than a 34 percent chance. Not one start in between.

Blue Note week continues.

This one is a favorite…

It wasn’t too long after Cliff started writing at the Banter that we realized our constrasting styles worked well together.

“You guys are like peanut butter and jelly,” said Steve Goldman. When I told this to Cliff he corrected the analogy, “More like peanut butter and chocolate.”

Say word.

Five-and-a-half years ago, Alex plucked me from relative obscurity to co-author this esteemed blog, and not a day has gone by that I haven’t been grateful to him for bestowing that honor upon me or thankful to all of our readers for their passion, conversation, and surprising interest in what have likely been the millions of words I have spilled into this space, first at the late, lamented Baseball Toaster, and for the last two seasons here at SNY.

It is not without a great deal of emotion that I depart Bronx Banter today to take advantage of an opportunity that has opened up for me over at YESnetwork.com, and while it is an opportunity that I cannot afford to pass up, for both myself and my family, it is one that I am very much aware might very well not have come to pass had it not been for the previous opportunity given to me by Alex and the strength of this platform. The same is true of my increasing presence on SI.com, the door to which Alex was even more directly involved in opening. Yet, in departing Bronx Banter, I thank Alex not only for helping me gain ground on my aspirations, but for providing constant motivation and inspiration, for his boundless enthusiasm for life outside of baseball, for his endless support, even when that support pushes me in directions opposite to his own interests, and most importantly for being a good and trusted friend.

A lot of life happens in five and a half years. Alex and I both got married, Will Weiss and I both became fathers, and we lost some people very close to us, Alex’s father and Todd Drew among them. Bronx Banter has been part of our lives throughout all of that, it is a virtual home, but a home nonetheless, one that I have found very comfortable and welcoming. That makes it all the more unsettling to leave, but I’m comforted by the fact that I’m leaving Alex and all of you in good hands with the vastly expanded stable of Bronx Banter contributers, Will, Emma, Diane, Bruce, Hank, Jon, and Matt, and by the fact that I am leaving the side of one good friend and supporter to join another (YES’s official announcement of my new gig has yet to drop, but it’s not hard to connect the dots).

As for what you can expect from me over at YES, well, life may happen, but I don’t change all that much. I’ll be doing the same things for YES that I’ve been doing here at Bronx Banter, which were essentially the same things I was doing on my own blog prior to that (though I hope seven years in I’m doing them better by now). I’m hoping you will all make the few extra clicks to continue reading me at YES and SI.com, or to follow my twitter feed. Check out my analysis and series previews on YES, then click back to Banter for the game threads and recaps and for all of the other things Alex and the crew will continue to do so well. As I said to Alex last night, I don’t see this as a splintering of the Bronx Banter family, but as another step in its expansion. I hope you all come to feel the same way.

This, then, is my penultimate post as co-author of Bronx Banter. I’ll bow out tonight with my preview of the quickie two-game series with the Texas Rangers and then reemerge in the morning over on YESnetwork.com. Thanks to everyone involved with Bronx Banter on every level, to Ken Arneson and the good people at SNY, to every last reader, but above and beyond all else, to Alex Belth, without whom, to paraphrase Yogi, none of this would be necessary.

Dig this nice letter by a Michael Ebner in the Metropolitan Diary today:

As we were threading our way through crowded streets, I realized that we had approached the site of the former Polo Grounds, longtime home of the New York Giants. I regaled the cabby with recollections of attending ball games there — with my grandfather, father, and brother — some 50 years ago.

Suddenly he veered off topic, asking me how much time I had before my flight. Learning that I had more than three hours, he shut off the meter and parked the cab (in a no-parking zone). Together we walked around the housing complex in the vicinity of center field known as Polo Grounds Towers.

He particularly wanted me to see the commemorative sign, on a patch of lawn, noting that this housing complex once was the home of the Giants. Reflecting later on this spontaneous experience, it occurred to me that this was the only time in my 68 years that I had actually stood on the field of play in a major-league ballpark.

Over at SI.com, Tim Marchman asks if the Tampa Bay Rays are unusually prone to being no-hit?

Tampa Bay’s hitters are good, but they have a flaw: They are, essentially, a take-and-rake lineup. The team rates fifth in the American League in on-base percentage, but fourth from the bottom in batting average. They lead the league in both walks and strikeouts as a percentage of plate appearances, and are fourth-worst in both groundball-to-flyball ratio and line drive percentage. Basically they draw walks, hit for extra bases and otherwise beat the ball into he ground, which is essentially what you would be looking for in a team especially liable to being dominated on a given afternoon.

Additionally, their home park is possibly the worst in baseball for the base hit. Tropicana Field has reduced base hits by about 11 percent compared to an average park this year; the Rays and their opponents have hit .256 away from Tampa Bay this year, but just .238 at the Trop. The only worse park for the base hit in the majors has been the Oakland Coliseum.

Tony Judt, the intellectual historian, passed away on Sunday of ALS. Judt wrote a series of poignant essays about living with ALS for the New York Review of Books.

From Night:

This cockroach-like existence is cumulatively intolerable even though on any given night it is perfectly manageable. “Cockroach” is of course an allusion to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes up one morning to discover that he has been transformed into an insect. The point of the story is as much the responses and incomprehension of his family as it is the account of his own sensations, and it is hard to resist the thought that even the best-meaning and most generously thoughtful friend or relative cannot hope to understand the sense of isolation and imprisonment that this disease imposes upon its victims. Helplessness is humiliating even in a passing crisis—imagine or recall some occasion when you have fallen down or otherwise required physical assistance from strangers. Imagine the mind’s response to the knowledge that the peculiarly humiliating helplessness of ALS is a life sentence (we speak blithely of death sentences in this connection, but actually the latter would be a relief).

Morning brings some respite, though it says something about the lonely journey through the night that the prospect of being transferred to a wheelchair for the rest of the day should raise one’s spirits! Having something to do, in my case something purely cerebral and verbal, is a salutary diversion—if only in the almost literal sense of providing an occasion to communicate with the outside world and express in words, often angry words, the bottled-up irritations and frustrations of physical inanition.

The best way to survive the night would be to treat it like the day. If I could find people who had nothing better to do than talk to me all night about something sufficiently diverting to keep us both awake, I would search them out. But one is also and always aware in this disease of the necessary normalcy of other people’s lives: their need for exercise, entertainment, and sleep. And so my nights superficially resemble those of other people. I prepare for bed; I go to bed; I get up (or, rather, am got up). But the bit between is, like the disease itself, incommunicable.

I suppose I should be at least mildly satisfied to know that I have found within myself the sort of survival mechanism that most normal people only read about in accounts of natural disasters or isolation cells. And it is true that this disease has its enabling dimension: thanks to my inability to take notes or prepare them, my memory—already quite good—has improved considerably, with the help of techniques adapted from the “memory palace” so intriguingly depicted by Jonathan Spence. But the satisfactions of compensation are notoriously fleeting. There is no saving grace in being confined to an iron suit, cold and unforgiving. The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably—as it now appears to me—by those not exclusively dependent upon them. Much the same can be said of well-meaning encouragements to find nonphysical compensations for physical inadequacy. That way lies futility. Loss is loss, and nothing is gained by calling it by a nicer name. My nights are intriguing; but I could do without them.

May he rest in peace.

If we’re to believe Professors Hershiser, Morgan, and Miller, this was a successful weekend for the Boston Red Sox.  Or it was a successful weekend for the New York Yankees.  By only splitting the four-game season in the Bronx, the Sox leave town with the same six-game deficit they brought with them, and since the Rays have been scuffling as well, the Yankees are still two games up in the division — never a bad thing.

The disappointing thing, though, is that this game could easily have gone the other way.  Phil Hughes had a bit of trouble in the second inning, giving up two runs on a handful of stolen bases and infield singles, but then recovered nicely.  Aside from a two-out double in the fifth surrendered to Victor Martínez, Hughes was perfect the rest of the way.  He fell victim to his high pitch count and left after six innings, but Kerry Wood, Boone Logan, and Joba Chamberlain held down the Sox hitters over the final three innings, giving the Yankees three different chances to win in the later innings.

Jon Lester was almost unhittable for most of the afternoon, not faltering until the seventh inning when Jorge Posada opened the frame with a ground ball single to left field.  Marcus Thames came up next and smoked a rocket towards the bullpen in right center field.  The game hung in the balance for just as long as it took the ball to fly from Thames’s bat to the very tip of the wall.  Another inch — seriously — and it would’ve scraped over the wall, tying the game at two, but the fence held the ball in, gently dropping it onto the warning track in front of Jacoby Ellsbury.  On the radio broadcast John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman went on and on about the terrible bit of bad luck that had just kept the Yanks from evening the score, but it’s not like they were in bad shape with men on second and third and no one out.  Five pitchers later things looked even better as Lester plunked Austin Kearns to load the bases.  With Curtis Granderson, Derek Jeter, and Nick Swisher lying in wait, the game would surely be tied at the very least.

But it didn’t happen that way.  Lester muscled up to strike out Granderson and was relieved by flame thrower Daniel Bard who dismissed Jeter and Swisher on six high octane fastballs.  Threat over.

Mark Teixeira led off the eighth with big home run off of the same Mr. Bard who had been unhittable only moments earlier, and when Alex Rodríguez followed that with a single, things were suddenly interesting again.  But then Mr. Girardi entered the fray.  Now, even though I was a bit critical of his performance in Sunday night’s game, I don’t usually criticize Girardi — or any other manager, for that matter.  But there’s one habit Girardi has that drives me absolutely crazy.  He loves to pinch run, and it doesn’t matter a bit who’s coming out of the game.  So when A-Rod, singled and reached base as the potential tying run, Girardi pulled him in favor of Brett Gardner.  First of all, I love Brett Gardner.  Love him.  And I understand that he’s a walking stolen base, but I have two huge problems with Girardi’s line of thinking.  First, by running Gardner, you’re essentially playing for a tie.  This is fine, except that you’ve just removed one of your best hitters, a hitter who otherwise might’ve helped you win the game when his spot comes around again.  Second, it’s not like you’re running for Jorge Posada; A-Rod can steal a bag.  Gardner then added to my frustration by staying anchored to first for the first five pitches of Robinson Canó’s at bat.  He finally ran as Canó grounded out to second, putting him in scoring position, but if you’re going to pinch run Gardner in that spot, shouldn’t you send him to first base with explicit directions to run early in the count so that Canó, Posada, and Thames would each have an opportunity to drive in the tying run?  But what do I know?

Now back to the actual game.  After Posada walked, Lance Berkman hit for Thames and popped out to left for the second out, then Jonathan Papelbon came on to retire Austin Kearns on one pitch.  Another threat over.

True to form, the Yankees mustered one final rally in the ninth inning when Jeter walked with one out and stole second, but Papelbon wrapped it up by striking out Swisher and Teixeira.  Red Sox 2, Yankees 1.

The most impressive Jon Lester–who has struggled recently, not winning a game since before the All-Star Break–goes against Phil Hughes today at the Stadium. It’s a “must-win” for Boston.

Here’s hoping the Yanks can foil ’em.

Go git ’em, boys.