Well, everything went wrong last night but here’s a quick overview in easy to digest bullet-point format.
- The most important thing is that Chien-Ming Wang still looked uncomfortable on the mound and not used to pitching. He didn’t have his best stuff, he couldn’t locate anything. In other words, he was really bad. Something is wrong with him mechanically right now and unless he gets a phantom injury it means bad news until that gets straightened out.
- The Ump behind the plate (Tony Randazzo–I’m not going to forget that name!) was calling a very tight zone for both pitchers. Wang was missing his spots by a ton, but he wasn’t helped out any here. This is fine, but everything that was the tiniest bit borderline was a ball. It happens, next time he’s got to make his pitches.
- Scott Kazmir was completely 100% locked in. He looked amazing. The Yankees lineup for the most part simply could not touch him. When they did hit balls well off him, they got gobbled up by BJ Upton and Carl Crawford in the outfield.
- Jonathan Albaladejo took the “throw a strike” thing too literally and threw a mega meatball to Carlos Pena which put the game totally out of reach early on.
- The bullpen is now dead. Albaladejo, Edwar, Coke all threw too many pitches to be available for a few days. David Robertson is kicking amazing amounts of ass at SWB (last night he went 3IP, gave up a hit and a walk and struck out 7) but wouldn’t be available to pitch today. Bring on Mark Melancon.
- The infield defense made me want to cry. You can’t lose popups in the ceiling like that. I find myself excusing Robinson Cano’s error because I’m not exactly sure how he was supposed to catch the ball with Ramiro Pena up against him like that. Bad communication there, boys.
I might as well touch on the few things that went right to avoid killing myself in despair (or at least be very sad today):
- Nick Swisher is the most awesome person to ever live and play baseball. Here is the proof.
- Edwar Ramirez looked pretty good. He should never have to go for two so I’ll forgive the homerun. I excuse the other hit because it wasn’t even hit hard (and was hit by Evan Longoria who is pretty unstoppable right now).
- The Mets lost on a run balked in.
