Dean Watch: Part IV

I need to finish up a few more pinks and oranges, then a crap load of black and blues, I'm just waiting on a few key ingredients.

CMW

Got to catch a few innings of this one on the net, and it was good to see CMW work out of jams with confidence. A couple of gappers put you in a two on, no out tight spot? No problem - a strike-out and a double play later and you're walking back to the dugout. But in watching the game tonight, and even when he took a perfect game into the 8th against the Mariners, you could still imagine him allowing a couple of cheap base hits and a double. That is the trouble with relying on a ball hit into play as the basis of your success, but hey, Maddux has made a pretty good career out of it. But as Rob Neyer has noted in the past, most pitchers who go on to long successful careers strike out more than 0.37 batters per inning. Like most types of pitchers, it's great fun to watch when things are going good, but it's definately more painful to watch when things are going poorly. So here's to fun.

Dean Watch - Part IV

Just getting started on the Oranges and Pinks.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

a.) He got to watch the latest bullpen meltdown from an air-conditioned box with a bar.

b.) The front office panic move involved signing Roger Clemens, rather than firing him.

c.) Doug Mientkiewicz just made it over the Mendoza Line.

d.) Kei Igawa was just sent down to Triple A.

So Willie Bloomquist, Seattle's modern day Rex Hudler, slides in and steals a split at Yankee Stadium, resulting in yet another tough loss. If the Yankees end up missing the playoffs by just a few games, here are 3 key losses that I will remember:

4-15-2007 New York 4, Oakland 5. Marco Scutaro Walk Off. How weird does that sound?

4-20-2007 New York 6, Boston 7. Five run 8th for Boston. Need I say more?

5-7-2007 Seattle 3, New York 2. Assist to Gerry Davis.

Mike's Intruder - Red

Dean Watch: Part III

Highlander

Purple

Kingfisher

Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde

5-5-2007

Seattle 1 2 0
New York 8 13 0

On a road trip this weekend, I had the opportunity to listen to almost all of this game on the radio. Both the Seattle and the New York broadcast were availible, and I chose the Seattle guys, because although their pre and post game coverage is always hopelessly optomistic, they call a good game, and John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman are just plain annoying.

The pitching matchup was an interesting one - Jeff Weaver and Chien Ming Wang. Weaver's welcome in Seattle is just about worn out, with the 15+ ERA and all. Wang is just off an injury, and although he was effective all of last year, he still gives up a ton of contact even when successful, and it only takes a few seeing eye singles to land in a heap of trouble.

Weaver dodged trouble through the first 5 innings, prompting the announcers to draw comparisons with his Cardinal playoff heroics, but then had a stat correcting 6th, using a creative combination of hit batsmen, walks, singles and doubles to allow a 5 spot.

Wang on the otherhand cruising along with a perfect game. I started to actually believe that it might happen when he struck out Ibanez to end the 7th after trailing 3-0. He would only retire one more batter before giving up a solo shot to Broussard. In hindsight, I'm sure they were happy to be able to keep his pitch count at 103. It would have been very interesting to see how Joe would have handled the situation in the ninth had Wang kept the perfect game alive.