have to agree with yagotta here. part of baseball is getting gifts, because it evens out when you give gifts like damon last night.

@ Evan3457:

Awesome work, Evan! That’s why you make the big bucks

Tresh Fan wrote:

What I thought interesting is that the Yankees collected only 5 hits but still managed to ground into 3 double plays (and it could have been four!). Which leads me to wonder if a team—and particularily, a Yankees team—has ever had a game where it had as many as 5 base hits and at least 5 GIDPs. It must have happened sometime, don’t you think?

Yanks have never done that, but other teams have.

A quick search using the Team Batting Game Finder on Baseball-Reference shows the following:

Yanks have had 3 games in the last 55 years in which they got 4 hits, and grounded into 5 DP; 5/8/74 vs the Red Sox in Fenway, 8/28/77 at home vs. the Rangers (and they won a title in 1977), and most recently, 8/18/91 at vs. the White Sox.

The Yanks have had two games in which they had 6 DP, but they 12 hits and 4 BB in the 1st, and 9 hits and 5 BB in the other. Oddly enough, the Yanks won BOTH games.

As for opponents, the Yanks have had 9 games where they held their opponents to 5 hits or less, and turned at least 4 GIDP. In 1964, they 2-hit the Senators (with 5 BB) and turned 4 DP. The big one was just 3 years ago, when Wang shutout the A’s 2-0 on May 12th, holding them to just 4 hits and 3 BB, while still inducing 5 GIDP.

The all-time champ for “GIDP efficiency” was the 1964 Mets who, on May 5 in Milwaukee, grounded into 5 DP on only 4 hits and 2 walks in a 6-0 shutout by Warren Spahn of the Braves. They had no HBP, and the Braves made no errors, so the Mets had a total of 6 baserunners and didn’t score, but only left one runner on base for the game. Two interesting additional facts on that game:

1) The Mets did all of their rally-killing work in the 1st 6 innings; Spahn retired them 1-2-3 in the 7th, 8th, and 9th.
2) The Braves 1st baseman that day, and therefore the only fielder to participate in all 5 GIDP, was a 24-year-old part-time catcher named Joe Torre.

@ ken:
I hate the bunt also (which Jeter almost certainly did on his own, as usual), but if there is ever a good spot to bunt with DJ, that is it- where you need one run late in a game and the bunt will put a runner at third with less than two outs. I dont like it, but it is not the worst move.

When Jeter squared to bunt in the 8th inning I was screaming at the TV. One of the most clutch hitters on the team is forced to give up an at bat. And I don’t count his eventual GIDP because the bunts cheated him of a true AB. The game was lost right there.

@ Tresh Fan:
It’s funny, you would think that it would have happened, but I bet it hasn’t. Every year some strange stuff happens, and Jayson Stark tells us that it was the first time in MLB history. Baseball is an awesome game.

What I thought interesting is that the Yankees collected only 5 hits but still managed to ground into 3 double plays (and it could have been four!). Which leads me to wonder if a team—and particularily, a Yankees team—has ever had a game where it had as many as 5 base hits and at least 5 GIDPs. It must have happened sometime, don’t you think?

Also, I understand that Castillo’s was pretty bad, but if that error had happened in the same spot in the third inning, I doubt you would have called it a gift, you would be counting that game as a regular win. The Yankees put runners on base and created the situation. It was certainly a lucky play, but no more so than any dropped flyball at any point in any game. It just came at a good time.

So Willy Aybar= gift, but Johnny Damon’s play last night doesn’t?