G-I-D-P Spells Frustration Over Last Night's Ending

At times, I feel like I'm spoiled as a Yankee fan. I don't expect the team to go 162-0, but in the past two years I've seen them launch some improbably comebacks and made opposing bullpens look like mush so often that I feel like they are never out of a game. So when last night the Yankees were down 2-0 or 3-0 in a game, I felt like a comeback was not only imminent, but necessary. The team's bats had failed recently and this was about the time they turned it on and stole a game. And while things were derailed in the 8th inning when Marcus Thames grounded out, I felt that the 9th inning was going to provide promise as well.

GIDP is becoming all too Jeterian at times (MSNBC)

But then came "fun with numbers" as Derek Jeter--El Capitan, Captain Clutch, etc--rapped into a 6-4-3 double play. Game over.

I'm not naive to suggest that the Yankees should come back there. Or that Derek Jeter is the clutchiest clutch hitter that ever lived, but the Yankees could have not swung the bat and won that game. Nor was this all Jeter's fault as Jorge Posada (and to a lesser extent Marcus Thames and Curtis Granderson) were guilty of the same Jeterian mistakes as the Captain himself. And I'm not unappreciative of who Derek Jeter is or what he's done for this team, this franchise and this sport*, but there were some serious problems that I had with yesterday's game**.

*Side Note: Joe Posanski had a great debate today about Derek Jeter vs. Mariano Rivera on who was more important to the Yankees. I need to get into greater detail in a later post about this, but the answer for me is Mariano Rivera and the reason is because of an Intro to Econ concept called opportunity cost. With the Yankees financial might, they could always sign another shortstop such as Alex Rodriguez  to take over for Derek Jeter and the result would have been pretty damn good if not better. But the opportunity cost of Mariano Rivera is unthinkable (and Rivera is a "rate environment extremophile" according to Tommy Bennett of Baseball Prospectus so you gotta love that). JoePo touched on this but even the best closers in the game never reached the level of consistency or dominance that Mo did. Money can't buy that. That isn't to say that Derek Jeter wasn't more valuable to the Yankees dynasty (he definitely was and any WAR or Win Shares) calculation will back that up, but despite the fact today's closers are vastly overrated, the answer has to go to Jeter in the value column. Though I may have mixed up the two. Undetermined.

**Side Note #2: to be honest, most of what I saw of the game was from the 8th inning on. I tuned in and out, but, unlike most of the games recently, I did not watch from start to finish.

First came Marcus Thames. With runners on 1st and 2nd and two outs in the 8th, the Yankees went to Thames over Ramiro Pena. This was an extremely gutsy call by Joe Girardi (Pena was the Yankees last true infielder so the Yankees had to not only vacate the DH spot in the next inning, but go with Francisco Cervelli at 3rd) and, in my opinion, was the right one. Pena is so bad that by any WAR calculation you use (B-R or FanGraphs), Pena should be paying the Yankees (sort of a suckiness tax). In lieu of that, Girardi should be taking every chance he can get to pinch hit for so kudos for doing so.

Thames followed a Mark Teixeira walk by Jose Valverde (he of the over 5 walks per 9 crew and the same guy who walked 5 Red Sox on July 30th). The first pitch was a called strike (and you can follow along with me on BrooksBaseball.net). The following two balls outside. The fourth pitch was right now the middle and was a swinging strike. Valverde followed with a ball low, a semi-borderline call, but considering that the homeplate umpire Todd Tichenor would call only three low strikes all game (according to BrooksBaseball). 3-2, runners going, two outs. A pitch lower than the one before was weakly grounded out by Thames. It was a borderline pitch but considering that Thames was on the bench the whole game, he should have been able to observe that Tichenor really hadn't called that pitch all game and that as a player who has only hit 4 balls to the right side at home all season (according to MLB.com), he probably wasn't going to be able to hit that outside pitch. I don't terribly blame Thames there, though, because you rather he use his bat down two strikes than "pull a Beltran".

After Miguel Cabrera hit a Joba Chamberlain breaking ball out of the park in the top of the 9th, the Yankees looked like they had a daunting task: come back from 3-0 vs. Valverde, the All-Star closer. But with the July 30th meltdown against the Red Sox in the Yankees mind, they had to know it was possible. It looked even better when Valverde walked Robinson Cano on four pitches (a task that mostly occurs when the catcher puts up 4 fingers or Cano forgets to bring his bat up to the plate).

The next batter was Jorge Posada. Valverde had walked Mark Teixeira, had almost walked Marcus Thames and had WALKED ROBINSON CANO ON FOUR PITCHES. So the first thing that Posada decides to do is to swing at the first pitch. I repeat, Jorge Posada swung at the first pitch down 3-0 against a pitcher who had just thrown four straight balls to ROBINSON CANO*. I'm not kidding. I almost ate my Blackberry. Posada could have hit the ball to the moon and they still would have only scored two runs since we are played baseball and not "whoopee"**. So why, oh why, would you swing there Jorge***?

*Side Note: In Robinson's Cano's career (which dates back to 2005), he's walked on 4 pitches 82 times, 26 of which were intentional walks (according to Baseball-Reference's Play Index). This was only the second time that Cano had been walked unintentionally on four pitches in the 9th inning of a game. And this was Cano's first walk of the year (intentional or not) when his team was down in the 9th inning this season and only the 7th of his entire career. So this is a pretty rare event.

**Side Note #2: In elementary school back at Seely Place in Scarsdale, New York, we used to play a game called "whoopee". It was a kickball game where the only two rules that were different is that you could have as many people on a base as you wanted to at one time and that you could keep running around the bases after you scored and try to score again. The point being is that whoopee is the only sport I know of where you could score more than two runs with only one person on base. You would do this by hitting the ball really far and running really fast. Though, with Jorge's speed, I'm not even sure a ball to the moon would get him more than one time around the bases.

***Side Note #3: I'm not saying this because I'm shocked that Jorge Posada would do something boneheaded in baseball. Posada is one of the best baseball players I've seen who I would qualify as "stupid" as far as baseball goes. I've never given Jorge an IQ test and I doubt he's truly stupid but whether on the bases, behind the plate, or at-bat, Posada does way too many things that make me shake my head.

While this should have been egregious enough and someone from the bench should have promptly walked out there and removed the bat from Jorge's hand, George-y wasn't done quite yet. The next pitch he decided to hit on the ground. Amazingly, it just resulted in a forceout (even more amazing after Derek Jeter got doubled up to end the game, but more on this later).

I'm not sure that Posada could have giftwrapped an out better if he put it in a giftbox and tied a ribbon around it. I hate bunts but at least they have the [misguided] intention of helping the team. This was just dumb on so many levels.

Obviously stupidity* is contagious because Curtis Granderson went up there ready to hack, although he took one pitch, the next one he geared up and slapped the ball. Luckily this found an opening and dropped in for a hit. It still could not tie the game but like stealing down 3 runs, swinging down 3 runs before two strikes (when you're not the trying run) has to result in a hit. Has to. No excuse not to.

*Side Note: I'm not so upset that he swung because, well, it was a strike and he did reach base, but even in Little League I was taught that if you're down in the 9th, you take TWO strikes. Not one strike. TWO strikes. The Yankees, obviously, are incapable of such things.

Next up was Francisco Cervelli. Now I dislike Cervelli on so many levels and wish that he was relegated to pumping his fist on the bench, but he did exactly what you're supposed to do in that situation--he didn't swing. Not once. 5 pitches seen, 5 pitches let go. The 4th one was a strike but the 5th one resulted in a walk.

The same exact thing happened to Brett Gardner. 3 balls, a called strike, then a fourth ball. Now Gardner swings at the least amount of pitches in baseball according to FanGraphs so I wasn't really surprised--but then again, down by 3 runs and facing a guy who couldn't throw two strikes in a row, this was a really, really, really good idea. It put Derek Jeter up in a position where a single should tie it and started to move the win probability back in the Yankees favor.

Run is forced home and Derek Jeter heads to the plate with the bases loaded, one out and Jim Leyland trying to fake a Jose Valverde injury on the mound to get him out of there (didn't work). Ball one and ball two made it 14 out of 16 pitches that inning that were not strikes. Pitch 3 was a called strike. So obviously that means swing away for Jetes. He swung at pitch 4 (which was probably strikes though with Valverde's wildness, you wonder if he gets the call--and why not put that in the umpire's hands?) and hit it foul. The next pitch was right there and he hit it foul again. The following pitch was way inside and almost hit Jeter*.

*Side Note: Jeter usually leans into this ball and gets hit. Fellow Brandeis alum (and Red Sox fan) Ben Gellman-Chomsky wrote to me on Twitter: "@benjgc: GAHHH I hate the Jeter Lean." But this is one time where it would have been beneficial for the Jeter lean to come into play. I'm not saying intentionally dive into the ball or get hurt, but if Jeter just goes with his natural swinging motion, he takes one for the team and the Yankees have bases loaded with one run to score. Jeter has been in the top-10 in HBP 7 times in his career and has been plunked 148 times over his career, an active number only surpassed by Jason Kendall, Carlos Delgado, Jason Giambi, and A-Rod. Lean in!

So 3-2, one out. The only thing that Jeter CANNOT do here is ground into a double play. He strikes out he just moves it along to Austin Kearns, the next hitter.

Except Derek Jeter hits into double plays. He's been in the top 10 in GIDPs 3 times in the past 4 years and despite his speed, he's 8th among active players in double plays grounded into. And what do you know, he hit it to the shortstop, who threw it to the second baseman (Carlos Guillen, who made an unbelievable turn against an unbelievable takeout slide by Brett Gardner who is almost certain to get thrown at today for said slide), and somehow on to first to get Derek Jeter*.

*Side Note: This is the last one, I promise. I don't doubt Derek Jeter has lost a step over the years (even though FanGraphs 2010 speed score is Jeter's second highest since 2002), but the truth is that no matter how fast you are, the only way to truly avoid grounding into double plays is to not hit the ball on the ground. And while Derek Jeter has always been a pretty big ground ball hitter, 2010 has taken it to the extreme. He has hit the ball on the ground over 67% of the time for an ugly 4.16 groundball to flyball ratio. So, as Mark Simon of ESPN points out, Derek Jeter hits into a lot of double plays. So how does Derek avoid the double plays? Either get the ball airborne or don't swing at pitches that you can't drive (sometimes a strikeout isn't so bad!).

The game was over and I was shocked. I wasn't really shocked that Derek hit into the double play (he does that a lot as Wallace Matthews points out) and the Yankees loss wasn't particularly shocking. But how did we lose a game that looked in the bag? Another Yankee comeback, another walk-off win against a down team, another pie (maybe the first one for Jeter)...all down the tubes. Mike Axisa of River Ave Blues describes the biggest hit as "the one that never came" which seems apt. In the grand scheme of things it's one game and the Yankees are still tied for 1st place in the division and ahead of the Red Sox for the Wild Card, but this one felt like one they could (should?) win. Frustrating when it goes the other way.