Now That's Some Ugly Baseball

That was a tough game to watch. Right from the get-go I knew it would be one of those games. As soon as Jeter grounded into a double play after Melky's leadoff walk, I shook my head. Is it me, or does Jeter ground into a lot of double plays? That's #10 on the year for the Captain. Seems like a lot. Over the 1st 11 years of his career, Jeter averaged 13.6 GIDPs per season. He had a career high 21 last year and he's halfway to that total this year. That's not a good trend. He's got to be better than that, especially as the #2 hitter.

Rasner didn't do anyone any favors tonight. He was just awful, and quite frankly he has been for a while now. That's his 5th loss in his last 6 starts. Granted, he's been the victim of a lack of run support, but he's been inconsistent. Without Wang in the rotation, the Yankees can't really afford to have these poor outings from D-Raz. He's got to win his share of ball games. I'm not sure if D-Raz could have avoided it tonight. The Pittsburgh hitters were locked in. There wasn't much good happening on the mound tonight for the Yankees. LaTroy Hawkins was again beyond bad. He's another guy that needs to be more consistent. His last 5 outings were all on the plus side. Tonight, not so much. It was bad, just bad.

The Yanks definitely had their chances tonight. The only good thing was Robinson Cano. He's done this before though. He'll crank out a few multi-hit games and next thing you know he's oh-fer 10 or something. When Robbie cracks .250, I'll get excited.

Did anybody catch the hilarity that happened when Jeter lead off the 7th with a double? Jeter hits the ball over 1st base and the ball kicks over to the stands. You see this teenager in a red jersey reach over the rail and interfere with the ball. Automatic double for Jeter. Anyway, the ball goes in and out of the kid's glove and goes back out onto the field, where it's retrieved by the ball boy and he takes off with it. They show the kid in red calling for the ball as the ball boy runs away and when he realizes he's not getting the ball, you can clearly see him mouth the words, "you ***hole." I had to rewind it a few times just to make sure. I couldn't help myself. I bursted out laughing. Here's this teenager who 1)brings a glove to game, 2)interferes with a ball in play, 3)has the ball go in and out of his glove (which shouldn't happen when you have a glove), 4)doesn't get the ball and 5)calls the ball boy an a-hole for not giving him the ball. I don't know, but if you ask me, he's the a-hole, or better yet douchebag. I'm pretty sure I even said after I stopped laughing, "what a douchebag." Ken Singleton was kind of cracking on him to. I'm pretty sure he was hoping the kid would get bounced. I was too. Hopefully, he did.

After tonight's whooping, I can only hope tomorrow kicks off another slingshot. For those not familiar with the slingshot and want to know more, scroll up to the top of the page and in the Google search bar on the right, run a search for "slingshot." Make sure you click the button with the URL listed. For those of you that are lazy and don't want to search, here's a high level breakdown: get your butt kicked and then go on a nice winning streak. It's been known to happen. And it all starts tomorrow with Joba. Go get 'em Justin!

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie