MJ, I would agree. Wang is throwing more sliders this year, and he continues to improve that changeup. I’m not sure about more velocity, though. He seems to be in the same range as before.

(Last night’s YES gun was really, really low — it had Wang 89-90, which he never is, and had Vazquez at 90 — so it was off by five miles an hour.)

Despite that one big inning, I thought Vazquez looked good. He seems to have his velocity back. That fastball he struck A-Rod out on had a lot of life.

Cairo has had a nice series, but I hope Torre doesn’t make him the everyday first baseman. I guess he rides the hot hand (a disgusting image), but Josh Phelps has to be saying to himself, “What did I do?”

Is it me, or is Wang (1) throwing a greater variety of pitches and (2) pitching with greater velocity?

Last night’s game was one of those really fun games to watch on TV. The team managed hits and runs off a pitcher that was battling and had pretty good command of his breaking pitches, they fielded the ball cleanly and made good plays in the field, and they got exceptional (and efficient) starting pitching from their #1 guy. Besides a couple of baserunning mishaps and the fact that Cairo stranded Melky on 3rd with a lousy strikeout, last night’s game was an B+/A-.

My favorite moment of last night was seeing Posada block the plate on Owens. I thorougly enjoyed watching yet another runner test Melky’s arm. Did the rest of the AL not watch the Melk-man’s solid defense last year?

~~Look at Melky since May 1st~~

Amen.

Look at Melky since May 1st

.296 Avg, .374 OBP and a .506 SLG along with his great defense, and he has really turned it up in June so far.

This may sound a bit over the top, but I said before the game to my bud that it was the biggest game of the year. Well, they won, so today is even more important, because if they could win this series that would be 6 of 8 overall. Then we have Pettite, Clemens and Clippard against against the Pirates, a team they should sweep. This would put them at 1 under .500 and once they get even they can begin to get serious. But today is a must win, especially with the way Moose pitched last game. Play today, win today!

Torre is a freakin’ genius, I tells ya. His starting pitcher is going well, so he leaves the guy in. What a concept, I bet other teams are going to start doing the same thing now.

Nah, it all goes back to the power of:

Ha!

Johnny Damon lost his everyday CF job for good last night. The guy rounding third had blazing speed and the play wasn’t even close.

Great win.

That game went so FAST!

I was more annoyed with Gary freaking Darling than with the actual baserunning.

It was a quick game though. I didn’t even realize Wang was on his way to a complete game until they showed Mo playing catch with himself, throwing the ball up against the wall a little bit. FINALLY a good outing from Wang doesn’t go to waste.

I don’t know why, but any time someone throws a complete game, I kind of think it’s something special. It wasn’t a perfect game or no-hitter, but he threw just over 100 pitches through 9 innings. That’s amazing. And the one run that scored seems like not only small ball, but VERY small ball to me. They should probably be thanking the wild pitch for that.

I think the reason people are quieter when the Yankees win is because they’re not trying to figure anything out. When they lose, everyone’s thinking out loud, trying to find out what went wrong. It seems silly and almost condescending to sit there and be like “well, they made good plays on ground balls and caught the balls well, and they swung the bats well. oh, and pitching was good.” It just doesn’t need to be said.

I HAVE noticed that they seem to be a better team without Giambi. I don’t know if he was dragging because of the injury, but he just kind of served as a lump in the middle of the line up sometimes. I like Damon as a DH so far. And Melky in center is just amazing. That throw to the plate was just plain crazy.

I can’t speak for the posters on Pete’s Blog (and if I could, I’d be living in my parents’ garage and smoking weed out of bongs fashioned from Mello Yello cans), but I tend to post more when the Yanks are losing, too. For me, commiserating with other passionate, somewhat knowledgable fans is theraputic. When times are good, I don’t need the therapy as much.