Fundamentals 2, Angels 0

Fundamentals. Fun-duh-MEN-tuls. Noun. 1) Something that is part of the foundation of another thing. 2) In sports, the key concepts that must be mastered before attempting advanced work.

Example: A fundamental concept of baseball is the ability to correctly catch and throw a baseball.

Example 2: Another fundamental concept of baseball is that when one's team takes the lead, that team is supposed to keep the other team from scoring.


Were the New York Yankees fundamentally sound tonight? No, not really--they had three errors in the game.

The difference, however, is that while the Yankees worked around their fundamental mishaps, the Angels did not.

Sure, AJ Burnett's wild pitch that led to the Angels tying the game at 2 could be considered an error if you'd like, but that was more typical bad-inning-AJ than it was poor fundamental play on the part of the Yankees.

On the other hand, the Angels' second error of the game directly caused the Yankees to score the winning run, a ground ball that should have gone for the sure out that went instead sailing past the target and allowing Jerry Hairston Jr. to score.

It won't be cast as an error, but attention should also be paid to the game tying home run Alex Rodriguez had in the eleventh inning.

From the Yankees' point of view, their third baseman has been the unequivocal MVP of the postseason thus far (though there is obviously a lot of way left to go). Rodriguez has hit three home runs this postseason, and every single one of those home runs has been a late-inning, game-tying shot; the two at Yankee Stadium coming in what, to that point, would have been the Yankees' last at bat.

From the Angels' point of view, it was a failure of their closer, Brian Fuentes, as the Angels now join the ranks of the teams that have blown a save or late-inning lead this postseason--Red Sox, Twins, Rockies, Phillies and Cardinals are all guilty here.

The Yankees?

Well, the legend of Mariano Rivera still grows.

He pitched two innings tonight, did not reach 30 pitches, and was simply outstanding.

According to the folks at Baseball Prospectus, teams that win championships need good defense, strike out pitchers and lock-down closers.

Is it any wonder, then, that the Yankees are the only team in 2009 to have not lost a postseason game?

****

There will be many comments about Joe Girardi overmanaging the bullpen. Indeed, this is my gut reaction as well.

The more I think about it, however, the more I'm not that bothered by it. Who expects a postseason game to go 13 innings, after all?

With the off-day tomorrow, all of the relievers will get their day of rest, so by the time they play again on Monday, it will be a non-issue.

Demonize This

"I can't believe this," Jason says. "I can't believe we're going to lose to this team."

"I can," I say, sighing. "My luck isn't that good."

We're sitting in luxury suite 32, tickets that were a gift from my father. We've got a view that looks a bit like this:



Only, now it's night time and everyone's in a bit of a state of disbelief. It's not that the Yankees are losing this game that has us baffled, it's that the Yankee offense has only managed one run and that two of Minnesota's three runs were gotten off of Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera.

Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera. The back end of the Yankees' bullpen. The reason the team won 103 games. They are going to cost the team the game.

****

Earlier:

The story heading into the game was whether or not Joe Giradi (#27 below) and his decision to start Jose Molina over Jorge Posada would be cause for concern.



As it would turn out, the decision would be a non-issue. Molina, as we suspected, did not get a hit, but he never came to the plate in a crucial situation, either.

When AJ Burnett was done pitching after the sixth inning, Jose Molina was done catching. And so it went.




The Yankees didn't score a run until late in the game, when Alex Rodriguez drove in Derek Jeter after Jeter hit a double to right field.



We celebrated A-Rod's RBI hit, his third RBI in two postseason games, further strengthening the notion that A-Rod's demons are stuff of myth and slow-news-day media constructs. We didn't know what would happen later.

After Burnett came out of the game, Joba Chamberlain came in to pitch the seventh.



Chamberlain was sharp, getting the first two hitters he faced out before failing to get the third and Girardi, with a quick hook, pulling him from the game.



We were treated mid-seventh inning to Ronan Tynan's stirring rendition of God Bless America.





The entire Stadium sang with him, maybe because it was him, maybe because it was the postseason, but whatever reason, we sang.

****

In the eighth inning, Phil Hughes fails. The game is a 1-1 tie, and Hughes gets two quick outs, but can't get the third. Minnesota scores one run and Girardi goes to Mariano Rivera, who is more or less the Hammer of God, as multiple sources call him. If Mo can just hold it here, we think, we'll have a chance.

Thing is, Mo does not. The Twins score another run and it's a 3-1 game with only two at bats left for the Yankees.

It gets worse in the bottom of the eighth, when the Yankees go down 1-2-3, not even making an effort of it.

Jason is inconsolable, but the man sitting to my right is stoic.

"They're going to win," he says.

****

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Mark Teixeira is first up.

"He really needs a hit here," Jason says, "he can't take an oh-fer for the first two games." Jason is right. Teixeira doesn't have a postseason hit yet, and if he doesn't get one here, he'll fast become a goat.

Maybe Teixeira hears us; he lines the pitch into right field for a single. The Stadium begins to sense something and gets a little excited.

After all, Alex Rodriguez comes to the plate.



My thoughts are simple: I just want Alex Rodriguez to get on base without making an out. I even pray: please, G-d, please let the Yankees do this. Please let them win.

Jason's are more elaborate: "This place is going to go ape-shit if Alex hits one out."

We watch as Joe Nathan deals ball one to Alex. Then ball two. And ball three. Nathan gets Rodriguez to a 3-1 count and then...

...A long, high, grand drive. It's going to be pretty darned deep. It's going to be at least a double. It's going to hit off the wall. It's going to be GONE.

One swing, and all of the past Rodriguez playoff demons are forgotten as though they had never existed in the first place.





The Stadium crowd is so loud, so excited that it's literally shaking. A home run. A game tying home run. A game tying home run by Alex Rodriguez. A game tying home run by Alex Rodriguez in the ninth inning.

Whatever happens from here on out, we've all beared witness to this. We'll all remember this. Everything about it. Everything that went into it, and everything that came out of it.

We make Rodriguez take a curtain call.

****

The Yankees don't win the game in the ninth, and they don't win the game in the 10th although they should have: Brett Gardner, running for Jorge Posada makes it to third base on a bad throw to second while trying to steal, and Derek Jeter is on first base with only one out.





All Johnny Damon needs to do is hit a fly ball deep enough to score Gardner and the Yankees will win.

Damon, however, does not. He lines out, and because Gardner is halfway to home--having gone on contact--it becomes an easy double play.

The Stadium deflates. Minnesota has another chance and the Yankees are running out of pitchers.

****

Damaso Marte enters the game because Joe Girardi has already used Phil Coke.

Marte hasn't had a good season and none of us have much faith in Marte's ability to get three outs. We'll take just one, and Marte can't even do that tonight.

Girardi has three choices: leave Marte in, go to Chad Gaudin or go to David Robertson. Gaudin is a generally effective long reliever, but Robertson, who has occasionally struggled in high-leverage situations, has the better stuff.

Girardi goes to Robertson.

At first, the choice is disheartening as Robertson allows a single that loads the bases with no one out.

"There is no possible way this can end well," I say, not because I'm Optimist Prime, but because I want to temper my own expectations.

Yet, Robertson gets the next batter to line out to Teixeira, so hard that no one has a chance to tag and score.

After one out, there's a soft grounder that Teixeira throws home for out number two, and all of a sudden, there is a palpable relief of tension. It doesn't matter how the third out is gotten, just as long as there's the out.

There's a fly ball to Brett Gardner, who sets under it, catches it, and runs off the field.

***

It's fitting that in the bottom of the eleventh, Teixeira is first at bat.



He had the two stellar defensive plays last half inning, and had he not had that single in the ninth inning, Rodriguez's home run would have meant little.

Here, we'd just like Teixeira to get on base. We want the game to end this inning.

So Jose Mijares, a rookie reliever who's not actually that shabby, pitches to a $180 million first baseman.

There's a drive to left field.

We know it's hit hard enough, but we don't know if it's fair or foul.

It stays fair, but we don't know if it's high enough.

It has the height. Just. Barely. It grazes the top of the wall, and if you watch the replay, you can hear a hush as the crowd tries to process what has just happened. Then we realize:

"It went over! It's over! We win!"









We stay for the pie, because you have to. These are the New York Yankees, this is 2009. You stay for the pie.




****

I had never before been to a game and thought, afterwards, "I'll remember this for the rest of my life."

Never, that is, until tonight.


*****

I was able to meet up with a fair few: fellow bloggers Ben Kabak of River Ave Blues, Amanda Rykoff (@amandarykoff), fellow blog reader Justin Y. and beat writer Marc Carig (@ledger_yankees).

I went to meet Justin while the Twins were taking BP. Justin was sitting in the bleachers, but we'd never met before, so while I was looking for him I wasn't entirely paying attention to what was going on on the field.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a bad idea. My head was nearly lopped off by a home run ball, saved only by my very innate and well developed instinct to duct.

I attended the game with Jason Rosenberg from It's about the money, Stupid. He has a much, much better camera than I do so please hit him up for some truly amazing shots.

Yanks have 13th Walk Off of Season (Postgame Notes 08 September 2009)

For a complete recap please check out my post at The Yankee Universe

• Nick Swisher hit two home runs, Phil Hughes blew a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning, and Chad Gaudin pitched an utter gem for six innings.

• Derek Jeter was again held hitless, and it’s beginning to look like he’s pressing–not for sake of a record, but because Jeter is now in his longest 0-fer for the season.

• The Yankees have been playing .750 baseball since the All Star break.

Why the 2009 season kicks all sorts of you know what...

Been posting this as a comment and it's too good not to post here:

Here’s how it breaks down:
Homestand #1: Cleveland and Oakland: Melky Cabrera walk off HR in the 14th inning.

Homestand #2: LA, Boston, TB: Jorge Posada walk-off single to cap off a five run comeback in the 8th and 9th innings.

Homestand #3: Minnesota, Baltimore, Philadelphia: Three walkoffs in a row vs Minnesota and then one against Philadelphia. Melky single, A-Rod homer, Damon homer, A-rod to tie and Melky to win.

Homestand #4: Texas and Tampa Bay, only walkoff-less stand of the year.

Homestand #5: Mets and Nationals, Luis Castillo dropped pop up.

Homestand #6: Mariners and Blue Jays, Jorge Posada 12th inning HR on Independence Day.

Homestand #7: Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland: Hideki Matsui bottom 9th HR against Baltimore (2-1 game).

Homestand #8: Boston and Toronto: A-Rod HR in 15th against Sox and Robinson Canó game-winning hit against Jays.

Homestand #9: Tonight, Robinson Canó 3r HR.



That's just one homestand, all season, where the Yankees did not have a walk off win.

That's, uh, impressive.

These Boots are Made for Walking-off All Over You (postgame notes 12 August 2009)

At this point, if a Yankee game is tied headed into the ninth inning at home, you might as well start an office pool for who will hit the walk off.

For the eleventh time this season, the Yankees walked off--a quarter of all of the team's wins.

The game, otherwise, was fairly non-descript.

AJ Burnett was at times filthy, but, being Burnett, struggled with his control at others, and it came back to bite him when the Blue Jays tied the game on a wild pitch in the sixth inning.

The offense was stagnant, for the most part, though it should be noted that Ricky Romero is Toronto's best starter not named Roy Halladay.

Both Jeter and Alex Rodriguez got hit by pitches--Jeter eventually left the game, but to the relief of Yankee fans everywhere, X-Rays on his foot were negative. Alex Rodriguez got hit in the eleventh inning, so while we don't know if he would have stayed to play in the field, it would have been awkward if he hadn't. Jose Molina was the only Yankee left on the bench, so if A-Rod came out the most likely scenario would have been Mark Teixeira at third, Posada at first and Molina catching. Not the defensive alignment you want.

Thankfully, Robinson Canó--who has been red hot--was there to end it.

What should, of course, not go unnoticed is the stellar bullpen (yet again)--Phil Coke, David Robertson, Phil Hughes and Chad Gaudin.

Gaudin, especially, was impressive in his Yankee debut, pitching two scoreless innings.

Mariano Rivera was apparently not available--but this might just be related to the fact that the Yankees have that long west coast swing of doom upcoming.


The Yankees finish the homestand at 6-1, and their 41-18 home record is the best in the league.

They've taken the bottom of the ninth and turned it into a true home field advantage

The Comeback Kids

Over the past decade, home teams facing this situation went on to win the game less than one percent of the time. However, home teams down by just one run with two outs and the bases empty in the bottom of the ninth didn't fare much better, winning the game just 2.3 percent of the time."

Baseball Between the Numbers, p 16.


The Yankees this season already have nine walk off wins.

Though none of them--as far as I can remember, at any rate--involve being down by one run with two outs and the bases empty, at least two of them--Melky Cabrera's hit against Minnesota and Luis Castillo's dropped pop up--came with the Yankees trailing and two outs in the inning.

That doesn't take into account the number of otherwise come-from-behind wins that the Yankees have had in 2009--because there have been so many. Last night was another one.

I know I've talked about it time and again, and it can be hard to quantify what, exactly all this come-from-behind winning means.

The simplest answer is simply that the Yankees like to score late and have a bullpen efficient enough to hold the score as it is until the Yankees do.

Anyone that remembers the late nineties knows that while a bullpen cannot itself make a team go to the World Series, it can put a team so far over the top that no other team has a realistic shot.

The ability to score late also hints towards an ability hit when needed. Few would argue that the Yankees this season, with a low average with runners in scoring position (thanks, Robbie Canó), are the best situational hitters to ever walk the planet, but a team that leads the league in multiple offensive categories is finding ways to get on base. Get on base enough, and the runs will come.


The Yankees this season have been giving fans a great team to watch in 2009. It's not just that the team is winning, but that it is doing so in perhaps the most entertaining fashion for us as baseball fans.

Enjoy it.

What's Another Walk Off? (Postgame Notes 20 July 2009)

Walk off hits for the Yankees this season:

Melky Cabrera (3)
Alex Rodriguez (1)
Jorge Posada (2)
Johnny Damon (1)
Luis Castillo (1)
Hideki Matsui (1)

Nine walk off wins this season and we're in the middle of July.

All of last season, the Yankees had nine walk-off wins.

There's something in the air this season. There's got to be. The Yankees are 16-5 in their last 21 games.

In the past four games the Yankees have scored only 11 runs--and this at the New Yankee Stadium in the middle of summer.

The Yankees are also 4-0 in that time, which includes a sweep of the first-place Tigers. Some decent pitching--starting and bullpen, indeed, and Sergio Mitre can worry about being Sergio Mitre and not any sort of stopper.


Sure the Yankees have issues, like that Chien Ming Wang felt pain in his shoulder while playing catch today and is now shut down until Friday, but walk off wins--not including ones won on pop-ups--have a way of making those worries disappear.

At least, that is, until the next game.


At any rate, the last time the Yankees were this many games above .500 was the last day of the 2007 season.

It's good to be there again.

The Weirdest Walkoff You've Ever Seen (Postgame Notes 12 June 2009

Michael Kay, for all of his faults, said it best: How many times can you fail, and still win?

Because that is, more or less, what happened tonight.

The Yankees failed in many, many ways.

They didn't get good starting pitching, with Joba walking pretty much everyone he saw and throwing 43 pitches in one inning.

They didn't get great bullpen pitching--Tomko was awful, Robertson was good, all right, Coke couldn't hold the lead and Rivera still can't pitch in tie games, even in the eighth.

They got some offense (I mean, dude, they scored nine runs), but they could never build more than a one run lead.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, they had the tying run on second base and the winning run on first, with two out and Alex Rodriguez at the plate. And A-Rod, as we have so often seen, popped up.

Except, this time, Luis Castillo dropped it.

Luis Castillo dropped it, and Mark Teixeira had the grit and the good sense to run hard on a routine pop up, and he and Derek Jeter BOTH scored.

How often do we see a pop up and automatically draw the conclusion? How often do we forget they actually have to see it into the glove? K-Rod forgot; he did a fist pump as A-Rod popped it.

This wasn't so much a game the Yankees won as it was a game the Mets lost; though, to be completley onest here, I think any question about ghosts moving across the street has been resolutely answered.

Anyway, what it means is that instead of the Yankees having lost four in a row, they've opened this portion of interleague play with a win and keep from falling any further behind in the standings.

Yankees fans can sleep just a tiny bit easier tonight.

Luis Castillo may want to watch his back. The Mets fans are apparently not very happy.

Maybe it was Tino (Postgame Notes 17 May 2009)

Friday night, as Dan and I are sitting there, at Yankee Stadium, watching the game, there's a roar from the crowd.

We glance at the screen in centerfield to see why: Tino Martinez in the broadcast booth.

Three games later, three walk off wins later, I wonder if maybe there was something to it.

Do the dynasty teams invoke this much magic, to be able to affect the games ten years after? We don't even ask if they can, just if they do.

Perhaps the best part of it all is that this is the type of magic that turns a stadium from just a building into a home.

How must it feel to be the Minnesota Twins, to have to come back here tomorrow night knowing full well how the last three have ended?

Three wins, three walk off wins, five wins in a row.

It's a good weekend to be a Yankee fan.

How I Caught A-Rod's Walkoff (Postgame Notes 16 May 2009)

Dan and I have just walked the length of Fifth Avenue, from Central Park South to 34th Street/Herald Square.

We want to get down to Greenwich Village, but our feet are a little tired, so we hop the subway to West 4th Street.

We wander around a little, trying to figure out where things are in a neighborhood I am hardly ever in. Eventually, I cave and buy a map.

We're walking down West 4th Street towards Sullivan Street, and on the corner of MacDougal there's a bar showing both the Yankees and the Mets games. I look quickly at the screen; the Yanks are batting in the bottom of the 10th and the game is still tied. I pause to watch the batter.

"You wanna go in and get a drink?" Dan suggests. I know it must be torture for him, to watch this much Yankees baseball when he's a die-hard Red Sox fan.

"Sure."

So we take seats at the bar; he gets a Sam Adams and I get a glass of water because I can't drink beer.

We watch the Yanks do nothing in the 10th, play some stellar defense in the top of the eleventh...

...and then, in the bottom of the eleventh, we watch as Mark Teixeira works a lead off walk.

"Lead off walks come around to score sixty percent of the time," I muse.

Next batter, Alex Rodriguez. It'd be cool if he got a hit here, I think.

He does. He sends it right over the left field wall.

****


Two walk off wins in a row.

If that doesn't get a team going, nothing will.

Penultimate Show--(postgame notes 20 September 2008)

After eighty five years...

After countless chilly April afternoons and frozen October nights...

After Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle, Jackson, Mattingly and Jeter...

After record-setting home runs...

After football, popes and boxers...

After Don and the Davids...

After the drama of November baseball...

After the memories shared by our grandparents, parents and ourselves...

There is only one more game.




And it still matters.

Thanks to Alfredo Aceves, Mariano Rivera and Robinson Canò, tomorrow's game still counts.

The ghosts are out for one last time.



Here's hoping Jeter's injury isn't too serious to keep him from playing tomorrow. He has to play, it's as simple as that.

If you're going to the game tomorrow, please stay safe. It's bound to get a little crazy at the end.