April 29th vs. The Blue Jays

With all the leather flashed at the Stadium tonight, this game would have been a great Yankee Classic game for YES - except the Yankees lost.

In the 17 seasons prior to this one, Randy Johnson has allowed only 21 HRs to LH batters (in his career). That’s 1.24 HR to LH batters per season. So, what happens tonight? Unit gives up a 2-run HR to the only LH batter in the Jays line-up and the Yanks lose 2-0. It’s really starting to look like this is not going to be a magical year.

On the bright-side, the game was only 2 hours and 8 minutes long. With a 9:17 pm EST end-time, at least people had the rest of their evening to go find something fun to do.

In 10 of the Yankees 14 losses so far this year they have scored 3 runs or less. I’m starting to believe that the team’s ranking in On Base, Runs Scored, etc., is very misleading and inflated by the games where they have won 19-8, 11-2, 11-1 and 12-4.

What do you think would be happening now if Rick Down was the team’s batting coach? Stein has an untouchable in Donnie Baseball. If George thought the Yogi thing was bad, he’s seen nothing - if he takes the ax to Mattingly. I wonder if Torre realizes this too?

At some point, Stein will feel that he needs to do something to try and jump start the team. And, George does not have many options. This is all starting to point to one thing that can happen.

April 29, 2005 | Filed Under Game Commentary 04/05