It’s all your fault, Joe. The Yankees should have won today’s ALCS game, and they would have had a great chance at doing so, if Joe Girardi had left well enough alone.
I think Girardi has done a terrific job overall this year, but his relentless overmanaging of the bullpen cost the Yankees the game today. Why he would pull David Robertson, who has been nothing but money in the postseason this year, and replace him with Alfredo Aceves, who struggled mightily in Saturday’s game (and gave up the go-ahead run!) There was two outs and nobody on. The FOX cameras showed Girardi looking in his stat book. Given the short careers of each pitcher, what could possibly have been in there to prove that it was a good idea? Was it that Robertson was going to turn into a pumpkin if he got the third out in Anaheim? Good grief.
As soon as I saw Robertson leave the game, my heart sank. It seemed like Girardi was playing with fire in taking him out. Aarrgghh.And what’s even more infuriating is that the Yanks had come so far. They had runners on first and third and nobody out, and Mariano Rivera wriggled out of that jam. If they had lost there, I would have been upset, but I wouldn’t have been as angry as I am now. Good grief.
That wasn’t the only overmanaging Girardi did. Why he took out Johnny Damon and put in Jerry Hairston Jr. (and lost the DH, which meant Francisco Cervelli was pinch-hitting for Rivera) was pretty inexplicable. Damon has actually been hitting well this series. He had a homer earlier today. Yeah, I know he throws like Mary, as the joke goes, but still.
And I don’t know what happened when Andy Pettitte gave up the homer to Vladimir Guerrero, but that wasn’t so great, either. So much for that mound confererence. But Pettitte, not Girardi, gets the blame for that one.
I will give Girardi credit for going to Mo with a tie score. But geez, putting Aceves in for Robertson just hurts.
Besides No. 27, there were a few other goats today:
* Brett Gardner – he was put into the game for one thing – to steal a base. If he hadn’t been thrown out, he would have scored when Jorge Posada hit the homer. And the consequences of that were even worse – without Hideki Matsui in that spot, the Angels were able to intentionally walk A-Rod with two outs and nobody on.
* Joba Chamberlain – he looked terrible! What happened – too many fist pumps? And by the way, we got to see a lot of that San Diego Zoo sign in the outfield. I hate that sign – too many bad Yankee memories!
* The lack of RISP. The Yankees only got four runs, and all of them were solo homers. Gee, it would be nice if somebody in the bottom of the lineup could get a timely hit once in a while.
* Fox. As soon as they flashed the graphic about how the Angels had never had a walkoff win in the postseason, you knew this was coming.
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