Running 2011 Baseball Thread, Vol. I: Dedicated to spnited

If you don't watch the games.

 

What might me overlooked in all of this Arod vs Jeter stuff is that Cano is a monster and the next leader of this team.

And you have to make contact in these big situations. Millions of Yankee fans will wake up this morning saying that Jeter almost did it again and Arod could not even put it in play. And they are right.

 

The one thing numbers have over "watching the games" is that the numbers, while they can be misleading, are never assumptions made from blind prejudice. Rodriguez had a very poor series. He had a poor year. He was hurt, and he's getting old. But it's more fun to think he failed because he's weak and a bad person.

 

ARod has also had a poor postseason history (for the most part) and we all know about the exploits of Saint Jeter. There is plenty of blame to lay on Mark Teixeira as well, who is proving to be just a regular season player.

 

That is because millions of Yankee fans stlll have a desperate need to deify Jeter and demonize Rodriguez. This is also where all the bullshit about Rodriguez not being a "true Yankee" comes from, the need to blame him for every team-wide failure.

Face it, fanboys. Jeter's fading. If Jeter's bat speed hadn't faded so much, if he hadn't lost so much power, that ball does go out.

 

That is entirely accurate.

 

Factually inaccurate.

 

Is it a fact that he struck out twice last night? Once with the bases loaded (with the winning and tying runs on base) and once to end the game when he was the tying run?

 

Yes.

 

Since when is a fly ball to the warning track -- which is no big deal with the Stadium's short right field -- somehow more meaningful or impressive than a strikeout?

Last I checked, both Jeter and A-Rod both were out.

No style points in baseball for coming close vs. not making contact, so not even sure why this is a discussion point.

And while I'm no A-Roid fanboi, all this "choking" nonsense is ... well, nonsense. With only a couple exceptions, the best-paid lineup in baseball didn't hit in the clutch. It's just A-Roid is so much more unlikeable than Tex or Martin or Swisher or any of the other millionaires who failed.

 

Proof it wasn't just an A-Roid phenomenon: Yankees outscored Tigers 28-17 in five games and still lost the series.

Detroit's three wins came by two runs and one run twice.

As it has been mostly since Luis Gonzalez's bloop fell in to win the 2001 WS, Yankees lineup was full of guys who pile up big stats in blowouts but do not hit in the clutch.

 

No link, but they were discussing it on Boers and Bernstein or Mully & Hanley the other day. They had a story in front of them about it.