I didn’t think there was going to be a game. I managed to wait until 1:30am my time, before all the reports about rain in New York made give in to temptation, and go to sleep. I got a message from a friend, 30 minutes before the game, to wake me up. So, I managed to sleep for two hours, and I was cranky and groggy. I’m fine when I don’t sleep at all, but when I’m tired, and only sleep for two hours, my mood is not very pleasant.

This game, overall, didn’t do much to improve my mood.

I’m currently suffering through an injury (severe muscle strain), so I’m pretty tired all day long. The pain and medication are exhausting me, so it took every ounce of strength in me to open my eyes and switch the game on.

When you’re sleepy, the last thing you want is a boring game. The game was pretty boring for the most part. I found myself complaining about it. Sure, we were leading the game, but not much was going on. The pace was slow. Extremely slow. Especially with Beckett taking forever to set up between pitches. So, I hoped that something interesting would happen.

Little did I know that the saying I’ve been hearing since I was a little child, would come back to bite me…

I wished for a more exciting game, and it came back to slap me in the face. 

I have to hand it to our boys, they never fail to make things interesting. The previous game was excitement that ended in glory. This game was excitement that ended in horror.

On a night where our Ace was dominant through seven complete innings, one would think that our team would be able to hold onto a four-run lead and win the game. One would also be wrong in making such an assumption so lightly.

CC Sabathia pitched a “gutty” game, through mist and cold, and held the Red Sox to one run throughout. He gave up only four hits, and struck out five. It was a great start for Sabathia, who further proved that he is indeed a work-horse. 

Once again, it came down to our bullpen. Specifically, it came down to Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera.

Joba Chamberlain was awful. There’s no other word to describe his performance in this game. His pitches were off, his velocity was down, and he was inefficient. In one inning of work, he gave up three earned runs on four hits, and a fourth run that was charged as an error. 

Three runs were his fault. 

This is unacceptable coming from a reliever. 

He isn’t pitching seven or eight innings, where three runs could be scattered and go unnoticed. He is in the extremely important role of “Setup Man”. that means his job is to come in and hold the lead for Mariano Rivera to save. He cannot give up three runs in one inning, and have an ERA of nearly 5 on the season. Not as our setup man. 

It wasn’t only this game, it was his last game as well. There seems to be a problem with Joba Chamberlain, and I don’t know what it is. If it were an injury, then we would have known about it. Whatever it is, he needs to work on it and get it fixed. With the rest of our bullpen being an absolute mess right now, we need a couple of our ‘pen pitchers to be reliable. Joba Chamberlain needs to be one of our reliable pitchers. There is no way out of that responsibility, not as long as he’s in pinstripes.

I’d like to take a moment here and ask:

I agree with Joe putting Joba into the game. He’s our “8th Inning Guy”, and we want him to setup for Mariano. Any manager would have made the same choice. 

My problem with Girardi came when Joba Chamberlain was struggling, giving up base hits and runs. Normally, when a relief pitcher struggles with a couple of hitters, the pitching coach is sent out to the mound to check up on him, and calm him down. This didn’t happen with Joba Chamberlain. Joe Girardi didn’t send Dave Eiland out to the mound. They just left the guy in there to make a mess of things, and no one even talked to him.

Furthermore, we’ve all seen Girardi’s micromanagement in the past. We’ve seen him take pitchers out of a game while they’re cruising, and have already recorded two outs in the inning. Yet Joba Chamberlain gave up a couple of runs before recording a single out, and he was left in the game. What was that all about? 

Mariano Rivera pitched the ninth inning, and the Red Sox scored two runs. These runs were UNEARNED, therefore, Rivera cannot be faulted here. The Yankees defense was to blame for these. They messed up. They messed up bad.

Bill Coyle, a fellow Yankees fan, had this to say after the game:

Marcus Thames made a huge mistake in the outfield that allowed a run to score while Mariano was pitching. He called off Cano on a fly ball, and then he failed to catch it. 

Randy Winn was in the heat as well, because he swung at a “Ball Four” pitch to end the game. He also was playing the field a little too shallow, causing a fly ball to drop in for a hit, but that turned out to be Joe Girardi’s decision. 

Listen, in the heat of the moment, we all screamed obscenities at Thames, through our TVs and computers. I’m pretty sure the fans at the stadium did the same. Now that we’ve all had a chance to cool down, we can think a little more clearly. 

Marcus Thames and Randy Winn are not our strongest players, we all know that. We know that Thames is a failure in the outfield, and Randy Winn is a failure in the lineup. We dwell on that? Basically, you get what you pay for. What we need to remember is that we acquired both of these players to play off the bench. We did NOT acquire them to be regular starters. We’ve been plagued with a string of injuries, and that is the only reason they have bee
n starting. So, before we jump off the ledge and demand they’re released, let me tell you that they are good in the role for which they were originally chosen.

Of course, there was some umpiring failure once again (who do we have to bribe to get an umpire who knows how to call a strike?), but I’m not going to be *that fan* and blame our loss on the umpires. This loss was ours. 

The Red Sox didn’t win this game, the Yankees lost it. 

To me, that’s the worst kind of loss.

Now, you probably need something to make you laugh after the devastating loss, and my depressing post. 

I found this on The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte blog. This flow chart is 100% comical, and is not to be taken seriously. But, as you know, every joke holds a degree of truth. This chart exaggerates, and makes fun of fans’ reactions to every loss. When I saw it, I laughed. 

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)