Haha, as the words "I wonder if the Red Sox will play for an extra run and have Varitek bunt" finished coming out of Remy's mouth, Varitek hits a two run bomb. Awesome.
Kay said the exact same thing at the exact same time. 99.999% chance of a loss tomorrow. Not really a big deal though.
Jesus, I didn't realize Papelbon had a 70/8 K/BB ratio. He will probably give up a few runs here since it's a non-save situation.
In light of the abortion that AJ Burnett's about to drop on the mound tomorrow, it'd be nice if the Yankees could've won a game where they hung 5 on Beckett. Fuck.
Every sport involves failure. I'm pointing out how they keep trying to pretend baseball is unique in some way, and none of these things are unique to baseball. Besides, that number is wrong. Why use batting average when you can use OBP? The goal is to get on base, and no one would consider a .300 OBP good. Guess you could change it to failing 65% of the time. Anyway, that Pedroia dive was such a classic example of announcer hypocrisy. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a guy dive into first, be called out, and then have the announcers go on for a minute or two about how he never should've dove.
I like how it goes completely without mention how Ellsbury hit his homer and as he rounded first made a fist-pump and screamed "YEAH!" Not douchebaggy at all. Gritty I suppose. Because his socks are red. Fuck Girardi for not having the balls to drill him in his last at-bat. Oh, and F Beckett. He takes 20 minutes to deliver every pitch, runners on or not, and it's okay. Not like that affects the hitters at all or anything. Barking about stealing signs? Really? STFU and pitch you little pussy. BTW: For all the Jeter detractors, only one other player in baseball had a better batting average than the Captain in August. Where are all the guys who wanted Gardner to take his spot now? August: Jeter: 41/106 (.387 AVG) - .906 OPS Gardner: 24/106 (.226 AVG) - .595 OPS Brett Gardner sucks.
Still here. They play baseball in months other than August. For the season, Gardner has been worth two more (position-adjusted) wins than Jeter. And Gardner sucks now. He's been ridiculously streaky this year. God forbid you manage your stock portfolio in this buy high, sell low fashion. Wait... Dierking... is this one of those hyper-manic rants I'm supposed to be ignoring? :smile:
Ah yes, the good old WAR garbage. Which stat for the whole year do you want to compare? PAs: Gardner - 501, Jeter - 510 R: G - 73, J - 69 H: G - 116, J - 135 RBI: G - 32, J - 49 BB: G - 48, J - 38 Ks: G - 81, J - 59 Avg: G - .265, J - .295 OPS: G - .718, J - .737 I left out things like doubles, triples, and homers, since neither has hit much of them (except Gardner's legged out 3 more triples). Yeah, they play whole seasons. Except, everyone was talking about how Gardner should be the leadoff hitter, and his numbers aren't as good as Jeter's overall, and Jeter missed a few weeks. So no, this isn't a hyper-manic rant. Gardner watches a lot of strikes pass right by him. I'll take a guy who GIDPs over a guy who strikes out looking any damn day. At least he put the ball in play. (FTR: Jeter's GDP is 2 lower than the lowest of his career thus far, so he's not even doing that this year.) Gardner sucks because he's streaky. And not that good. His idiotic fielding statistics get him WAR garbage I'm sure. Big deal, he's defensively better than most other left fielders. Yippie. Amazingly though, he's only 2 above the supposedly defensively awful Yankee shortstop. Position-adjusted. Whatever.
You don't think Jeter is a better 2 than 1? Is there somebody other than Gardner you would want as 1? Jeter hates leading off.
You're all over the place here. 1. Jeter "missed a few weeks," but actually has a few more PAs than Gardner. So if you're comparing counting stats, there's no reason to try to skew it towards Jeter because of the missed time. That said, if you're comparing Jeter to his past self (like when you're talking about the GIDPs), those missed weeks are important, so the missed time shouldn't be discounted there. 2. GDPs are far more costly than Ks. 3. Dismissing Gardner's defense is just asinine. Forgive me, but there's really not another word for it. Yeah, it's hard to put an exact number on it, but trying to brush it off the way you did shows you just care more about sticking to whatever point you already want to believe rather than making decisions based in the real world. 4. You call WAR "garbage" and then post stats of your own. This is EXACTLY what I was talking about last week. You fear/deride that which you don't understand, and then go and try to use stats.... but they're ones you trust, so then it's "okay" in your book. I mean, you do understand that WAR is no different than the rate stats that you provided (OBP, OPS), except that it attempts to be an even more accurate predictor of production. Maybe if you knew how it was calculated you wouldn't be so quick to laugh it off before trotting out your own stats two lines later. Whatever, indeed. Look, Jeter's had a fantastic August, no doubt. Happy to see it. I wouldn't have bet on it in July, and I'm not going to bet on it continuing, given his splits. That is, yes, he was much better in August, but it's still mostly a product of him crushing lefties and being blah against righties. That hasn't changed much recently. So I'm not holding my breath for it to continue much longer, although I'll take it for as long as he can keep it up. Check it: By the way, I have no problem with you (or anyone) preferring Jeter over whomever. But when you go and try to call other people out with crap like this: ...well... you're being rather silly. Don't worry, I'm done with this.
I prefer Jeter as a leadoff hitter, because hits so many ground balls. You can't hit into a double play if there's no one on.
Yup. This is why they moved him to leadoff in the first place. Although, that's also one of the advantages of having one of the fastest guys in the league hitting in front of him; Gardner can steal his ways out of DPs... if the Captain can resist the urge to bunt on the first pitch, that is.
I guess that on average it really only comes into play once a game anyway and the first time around they rarely do anything.
All of this is meaningless when Jeter is constantly giving away at-bats whenever there's a runner on first and less than 2 outs. Even worse when Gardner's on base and Josh Beckett's on the mound. And it's the first pitch. And it's the first inning. But, I give him credit. For a year and a half, he was total shit and an idiot. Now he's just an idiot.
Nice slide by Cano, but when you hit it off the Monster like that, I don't think you should go for second unless you're Brett Gardner or a few other players (Bourjos, Crawford, Reyes, a guy or two in the NL I'm forgetting).
Montero = Bust. Normally I'd be thrilled with making Lester throw 42 pitches, no matter the outcome...but AJ Burnett's gonna need a lot more than 1 run. Would've been nice to push a few across there.
40 minutes first inning, 1 run you have to be thrilled with the first inning regardless. Obviously more runs are needed, but this means Lester won't be able to go deep.
Didn't see that we're taking guesses in the other thread. Whatever. Gonzalez hits a double let's see if AJ can deal with the thought of a runner on base.
