By DjackIn the last series of the season against a non division opponent, the Yankees faced the Dodgers in what was a crucial series. At least for the Yankees that is, the Dodgers are currently four games ahead in the NL West so they don't necessarily need to win as desperately as the Yanks. With that being said it's baseball, both teams want to win the game regardless of their situation. No desire was shown by the Yankees in the first game of this series, they came out flat, and were embarrassed because of it. A squad of Dodger fans showed up at the game and bought out a section of seats by the left field foul pole. They decided to raise their team flag in our home stadium and not one Yankee fan did a damn thing about it, I was disgusted to say the least. The Dodgers owned us that game and beat us 8-2, it was over before it started, and it is a game that I hope is soon deleted from my memory. Game two of the series was much kinder to the Yankees, as they won 3-0. CC Sabathia stepped up big time for the Yanks and went 6 1/3 innings strong as he struck out 7 batters. Of course you know if the Yankees win that most likely means Gary Sanchez had something to do with it, he hit his 14th homer of the season that game. The Yanks tied up the series which left us with an unfavorable rubber match against the best pitcher in the world. Kershaw lived to that title early as he was perfect through four innings, a few rain delays screwed up the rhythm of the game so it was surprising to everyone that Kershaw even came out to pitch after the second rain delay which was pretty lengthy. He got into trouble in the 5th and allowed runners to get to second and third with one out. He struck out the next two batters to get out of the inning and was visibly fired up. The game remained scoreless until the ninth, Betances who has struggled for us lately continued to do just that letting up two runs. That would be the difference in the game, a game that if we won would've put us just one game back of a playoff spot, too bad we couldn't capitalize, and now we're going to have to work that much harder to make the playoffs.
By MukAdrian Beltre launching his 30th home run of the season from his knee could not be more Beltre-esq. Beltre is 37 years old and hasn't played like it one bit. He has racked up 30 home runs, 97 RBI's, and has helped lead the Rangers to the lead in the division, with the second best record in the MLB and best in the AL, the Rangers are banking on him to continue his dominance into the playoffs, as he and fellow long-time veteran Carlos Beltran (39 years old) show that youth is not the only way to get into the playoffs. I can only hope that the Rangers play this way throughout the post-season and Beltre continues to hit dingers so we can see more of his antics, and I really hope someone tries to touch his head each game. By MukThe Cubs beat up on the Cardinals this afternoon, winning 7 to nothing, as Jon Lester dominated the Cards from start to finish, pitching 8 scoreless innings, allowing just 3 hits and a walk, with 8 strikeouts, to improve to (17-4) on the season and dropping his ERA to 2.40. The Cubs pitching has been great this week, as they are approaching the final weeks of the season and are looking to lock up the division, with just one more win. Rizzo tore it up, as usual, going yard twice and racking up three RBI's, becoming only the second Cubs left handed hitter in franchise history with multiple 30 HR (31) and 100 RBI (101).
The Cubs will look to secure the division for good on Friday against the Brewers in Milwaukee, and will need the help of their stars, young and old. David Ross helped keep the Cardinals in check today, catching two runners stealing, and hitting a home run. The young guns in Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo have dominated every bit of this season, as Bryant leads the team in Homeruns and Batting Average, 37 and .296, while Rizzo leads in RBI's with 101, and the Cubs need to rely on their bats over these next couple weeks, and the pitching needs to keep throwing the way they have, and the chips should fall the right way for the Cubbies, and it should be smooth sailing up until playoffs. By DjackOne of our big rookie call ups in early August, Aaron Judge is out for the rest of the regular season with an oblique injury. As much I'd love to say this is a big blow to the Yankees, it's really not. Aaron Judge has done nothing but strikeout or hit homeruns since he's arrived in the big leagues, and he strikes out way more time than he hits homeruns so I can't really say I'll miss his presence in the lineup. With Aaron Hicks also out for the season it does cause a controversy as to who will take their spot in the outfield. My guess is that Rob Refsynder will fill the open outfield position. He's not my favorite young player, but he does well enough to replace the little bit of production we were getting at that position. As for Aaron Judge, this is horrible news, not only because he's injured which sucks in and of itself, but he will have to earn a spot in spring training if he wants to start next year because he didn't prove himself whatsoever. If you're a Yankee fan this is really no big deal, if this were Sanchez I'd probably be locked in my room crying in the fetal position because our season would be over. That is not the case though, so lets not get to upset about an injury that won't affect us, lets get excited instead about the possibility of Refsynder finally proving he's ready to take that next step, and will become a full time big league player for our club. He will get his opportunity to do that today against Clayton Kershaw, not ideal but if he can hit Kershaw, he can hit any pitcher in this league. If we were to make the playoffs it's unclear as to whether or not Judge will return to team, but regardless lets just hope we can get to the playoffs to have that discussion.
By DjackStarting on Saturday night, Rich Hill was perfect threw 7 innings when manager Dave Roberts pulled him because of a hot finger. For those of you that don't know what a hot finger is don't be ashamed, I'm sure almost no one does, it's basically a sensation in your finger right before you get a blister, and these have plagued Rich Hill's career. Also these are the types of injuries other sport fans look at and call us baseball players pussy for, God damnit Dodgers, why do you have to make baseball players look soft by disclosing the actual injury. Next time, just lie and say it's a concussion or torn ACL so we can sound tougher, people coming out of games for blisters is not a good look. Anyways, that was the first failed no hitter attempt of the week. Next, Kyle Hendricks, a frontrunner for the NL Cy Young award was dealing on Monday. He was through 8 innings and allowed not a single hit. He had just three more outs to go to accomplish one of the hardest feats in all of baseball. Well, up came the first batter Jeremy Hazelbaker, what a stupid last name, and he put one over the fence. Not just ending the no hitter but also ending the complete game shutout, must've been a real gut wrenching feeling for sure, to come that far to come up short is always the worst way to lose the No No. I'm sure a Cy Young will help ease the pain though. The most recent attempt came last night in a meaningless Angels-Mariners game. Taijuan Walker, was perfect through 5 2/3 innings before an error by his shortstop put an end to that, but he still had the no no in tact through six. The lead off guy in the seventh came up and put an end to that with a lead of single, that was one of the three hits he would let up the entire game as he pitched a complete game shutout. Too bad he was just another victim to fall at the hands of the nearly impossible challenge of throwing a no hitter against world class professional baseball players. Three players in less than a week came within nine outs of this amazing accomplishment, none could do it. Just goes to show how impressive it is when someone can actually record all 27 outs without a base runner reaching on a hit. Will Jake Arieta have the lone no hitter in baseball this year or will someone join him in these last few weeks.
By DjackInjury after injury has derailed the Mets season, what was supposed to be a year in which they compete for a Workd Series title, they're struggling to even make the playoffs. When Neil Walker went down for the Mets some thought that might be the fatal blow to keep them from playoff contention, but the next man up model for the Mets continues to propel them. TJ Rivera an undrafted free agent, was playing second base last night, and he was the hero of the game. He went 3 for 4 against the Mets division rival, and hit the game winning home run in the top of the tenth. The mets had a 3-1 lead going into the bottom of the ninth with their dominant closer Jeurys Familia taking the bump. He had one of his usual make you sweat it out save opportunities, but this time failed to slam the door shut on the game. The Nats tied it up 3-3 before Familia was able to get out of the inning on a double play started by the player of the night TJ Rivera. He came up in the top of the tenth hit a bomb over the left field fence and gave the Metsies a 4-3 lead. In the bottom of the tenth with two outs and a runner on base guess who steps in for Washington, none other than the Mets killer himself Daniel Murphy, at this point every Mets fan is thinking the same thing, 'he's going to hit a walkoff right now, and destroy our season.' Well the Mets fortune finally changed and Jeremy Blevins struck him out on a 3-2 curveball to save the game. Mets got a crucial win and stay ahead in the second wildcard spot all in thanks to undrafted free agent named TJ Rivera.
By DjackAfter tonight Julio Urias is headed to the bullpen, not due to him struggling, just because he's a 19 year old phenom. Smart move here by Dave Roberts to keep this kid's inning's down to lessen the risk of him injuring his arm. This kid is going to be a special talent in a few years for the Dodgers, him and Kershaw are going to be a scary 1, 2 punch. The Dodgers see what is happening to Stephen Strasburg, perfect example of a young phenom that was overused before his arm could become accustom to a heavy work load. I like the conservative approach by the Dodgers, I'm sure fans would love to see this guy just stay in the rotation so they have another quality starter they can rely on.Him going to the bullpen will definitely make an already good bullpen just that much better. Dodgers are a very talented team with plenty of good starting pitchers so this move to the bullpen isn't going to screw up the way things are operating. Just good to see an organization doing right by a young player.
By DjackLos Angeles Dodgers come to town tonight, this is a start of a 20 game stretch that is going to make or break the Yankees. We don't have one easy series besides playing the Rays again for the rest of the season. After this series it's just games against the division, time to prove that we are the real deal, and that we can manage to make the playoffs even while playing in the best division in baseball. Enough about the road ahead, tonight we have a hot Dodgers team coming to town, and it's the start of crunch time. By the way, Yankee legend Don Mattingly returns to the place he was so great for so many years. Let's welcome him back by kicking his team's ass.
Game 1: Bryan Mitchell takes the mound against Jose De Leon, so right off the bat I think we have an advantage in the pitching match up. Jose De Leon is a rookie pitcher coming off his first start in the majors. It wasn't all that impressive, he's going to have to come into Yankee Stadium, and shut down one of the most powerful offenses in all of baseball, I don't think so. Bryan Mitchell looked great in his first start of the season allowing no runs in five innings, do I expect him to shutout the Dodgers offense, absolutely not, but I do expect him to give us six strong innings, and let our bullpen handle the rest. Yankees bounce back tonight and take the first game of the series against the Dodgers Game 2: This is the most crucial game of the series. CC Sabathia takes on Julio Urias in what could be a pitchers duel or a slugfest depending on which version of these guys show up. CC Sabathia has been great some days, average some days, and awful some days so basically you never know what you're getting from him anytime he takes the mound, lets just hope it's not the latter of those options. Julio Urias has looked like an ace in the making in a few of his starts, but just like CC you never know which guy you're going to get. I predict for the Yankees bats to mash against this kid, we are going to score enough runs that it won't matter what type of start CC has. Although, we could really use a long start from CC, our bullpen had to throw a lot of innings in yesterdays game, and we don't know how many innings Mitchell can really throw he might only be able to give us five. The bullpen has their work cut out for them in Wednesday's game as well with Pineda taking the mound. Regardless of CC, Yankees will score a shit ton of runs in this game as we take the series win in game two. Game 3: Mark this one down as a loss for the Yankees, Clayton Kershaw will be taking the mound in the Bronx on Friday. We have Pineda going for us so you know he's going to only give us five innings max, and probably allow at least three runs minimum. Kershaw probably won't throw more than five innings since he is coming off a back injury, so the Dodgers won't overuse him so he is good to go come playoff time. We won't score any runs as long as he is on the mound, I expect us to be at a 4-0 deficit by the time he comes out of the game. Dodgers bullpen will hold us from coming back and we will lose the final game of this series. It's okay, can't sweep everyone just got to keep winning series and the playoffs are inevitable. Players to watch: Corey Seager- I expect a big series from this kid, I'm talking multiple homeruns as he will be the biggest threat to our pitching staff and our chances of winning this series. He says Derek Jeter is his idol so he's going to want to impress Jeter by going off in his old home. Adrian Gonzalez- I have a bad feeling that if we are going down this series it's going to be at the hands of this guy. I know Seager is going to do some damage, but if Gonzalez goes on a rampage as well this series could get real ugly for us. Gary Sanchez- He's going to carry over his hot bat from last series and continue to rake for us this series. If Sanchez hits, everyone is going to hit, so we need our spark plug to stay hot so our offense will follow suit. By DjackYankees continue to take care of business as we took three of four from the Tampa Bay Rays. I think we all would've loved to see the sweep, but it doesn't matter how bad the team is, the toughest thing in baseball to pull off a four game sweep. Game 1 I blogged separately because it was so fucking awesome so go check that out tyler-ausrin-hits-walkoff-homerun-to-make-it-5-straight-wins-for-the-yankees.html... Game two Sanchez got back to his studly ways and hit his 12th homerun of the season, Refsynder also hit an RBI double in the first, thus showing how important the youth movement is to our team success. The old dog still showed he had some tricks left as Marky Mark Texiera hit a grand slam to basically close the lid on that game. The Bullpen showed weakness as they allowed the Rays to get within striking distance late in the game, Betances continued to his recent struggles allowing three hits and a run before getting the save, as we went onto win 7-5. I'm sure this is nothing to sweat all pitchers go through rough stretches, but lets just hope he gets back to his dominate ways soon because we're going to need him to be nearly unhittable if we want to complete this run. Game three was a pitchers duel between Tanaka and Chris Archer, the game was scoreless until the 6th inning when Jacoby Elisbury and Gary Sanchize went back to back. Sanchez getting hot again is just so nice to just throw back into all those people's faces saying he wouldn't continue to produce at a high rate after that ridiculous tear he went on. Sanchez almost did the unthinkable in the 8th inning as the Rays were intentionally walking him one of the pitches floated towards the outside part of the plate, Sanchez roped it into deep center field just missing a homerun, he got an RBI on a sac fly though so still a productive at bat. This kid does nothing but continue to impress me game after game. We went onto win 5-1 as Tanaka continues to look unbeatable going 7 1/3 innings allowing just one run, he walked zero batters, and had ten strikeouts. He's consistently proving that he can be the formidable ace that we need him to be. Game four we were looking for the sweep, I was too caught in football Sunday to even remember the Yankees had a game, but unfortunately I checked the score later and saw that we lost. Couldn't quite get the sweep as Luis Cessa struggled and was handed his first loss of the year. We did what we had to do and that was take three games from this series. Although the sweep would've definitely been nice with an extremely hot Dodgers team coming to town. I ain't sweating it, if we can't beat the playoff teams than we shouldn't be in the playoffs, and I think we will have no problem proving that to the country this week. It's crunch time baby, oh yeah and for all the bandwagon Yankee fans that I see slowly coming back after giving up on this team in May, you better come back this week or I'll be considering you as a bandwagoning fraud.
By DjackIn his first year with the Dodgers, Dave Roberts has shown that he can be an effective manager in this league. I haven't necessarily had any problems with any decisions he has made thus far, that was until tonight. After seven perfect innings, Dave Roberts pulled Rich Hill from the game, Hill was visibility irate as he should be. Roberts fucked up big time, obviously it's not going to effect the team negatively in anyway, but you just don't do that to one of your pitchers. Roberts admitted his decision to do that was poor, " I feel sick to my stomach, I'm going to lose sleep over this tonight" Roberts said. He should lose sleep over this, he just ruined a chance for one of his pitchers to achieve the most legendary individual accomplishment. Roberts said he decided to take him out since Hill had been battling an index finger injury. Hill who went off in the dugout after being taken out even realized that Roberts was just looking at the bigger picture, Hill said " Looking at it from a team aspect, there is always something that is bigger than any player, you have to understand that." After Hill was removed from the game, Joe Blanton came in and failed to complete the combined perfect game letting up a hit in the 8th. I'm pissed for Rich Hill, his teammates, and the fans because they missed out on an incredible opportunity to witness history. Oh well, who even knows if he would've actually even gotten the perfect game, regardless no excuse for Dave Roberts to do what he did, I don't care if the pitchers arm is falling off, you let him go for that perfect game or let him die trying.
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AuthorDjack- Chief editor Archives
April 2018
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