Sodo Oh No

I'm tired. A 14 inning game does that to you. The funniest thing was when my wife came into the family room at around 9:30, took a look at the time and the inning and said "This is a fast game". Two and a half hours later I groggily switched off the set in the bedroom (having moved there after inning 10).

Eighteen baserunners and only 2 runs last night and there is only 2 at bats that I was upset about. At bat #1 was Dan "red hot" Wilson coming to the plate in the bottom of the 9th against Jim Mecir. Mecir had previously hit Spezio with a pitch, gave up a single to Aurilia and then walked Ibanez. He had thrown 31 pitches and only 9 strikes to 3 batters. What does Wilson do? First pitch hacking at a ball way too low and away. It was out of the strike zone and it had wicked downward movement. The only thing Wilson could do with that pitch is hit a lazy ground ball. Even before he came to bat I said to TLMM (the lovely Mrs. Metzger) "I'll be really upset if Dan swings at the first pitch".

The second upsetting at bat was in the 12th inning. Ichiro leads off with a single and then Winn sacrifices. I understand Melvin's managing to the book but I would have preferred to give Ichiro a few pitches to see if he could steal 2nd. Duchscherer is a righty with a slow move to the plate and not a good pickoff move (as seen later). Melhuse was behind the plate and his preliminary stats don't show a great caught stealing %. At that point in the game I'd risk Ichiro stealing 2nd, having Winn sacrifice him to 3rd then and then see what happens.

Hey, a win is a win and I'll gladly take 3 in a row. The good news is that everyone other than Dan had really good at bats in extra innings. There were several shots that were either ripped foul or right at people. Most of the batters showed very good patience, laying off balls they could not hit and anything out of the zone. Freddy pitched well, the bullpen did well getting out of jams and even Jarvis found a nut. Why did Bob bring Jarvis into a tie game in extra innings ahead of Villone?

posted by John @ 9:21 AM