"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

Loss.

I just spent the last 5 minutes trying to write an opening line that communicated the fact that this post will be more brief than normal, but every time I tried to construct the sentence, all I could hear were THATS WHAT SHE SAID! and PAUSE! in my head. "This is going to be quick." "This is going to be a short one." "Here's the quick and dirty version of the game." Grumble grumble.

You get the idea. I have to be up at 5am for a meeting in NJ, so I'm going to put a cap on how long I spend looking for obscure links to even more obscure movies that quasi-support a ridiculous analogy that only tangently is relevant to the game. I may or may not actually stick to this plan.

(Spoiler, sort of: Just finished. About to post. I did not stick to plan. I need to be more like Anthony Trollope.)

The odds are actually in my favor, since it was a loss, I guess, and not surprisingly, I'm not as keen on dwelling on it. Particularly this type of loss, which would be one in which our lovable Lard pitches like he just signed with the Mets. Also, it's a loss to the TEAM TO BEAT IN THE AL EAST. The list of teams who AREN'T considered "teams to beat in the AL East is considerably shorter, if even existant at all.

PS, they are all teams to beat, because winning > losing. By design.

So, yesterday I wrote about the Yanks' off day, and this performance from Round Boy was exactly the type of phenomenon that baffles me. How does such a talented athlete have a whole day of being off?

I mean, obviously this is not to say that I'm incapable of it. Far from it. But it IS to say that every time I DO have a bad night of beirut or softball or pop-a-shot (I really wish the list of competitive endeavors in my life had a richer scope)...well, it makes me crazy, because none of those games can be chalked up to aging. It just means I'm inexplicably bad for an entire day.

Anyways, Tubbo.com's off day was off from the get-go, as most off-days are want to be, otherwise they'd be off half-days (or on half-days, in a glass half full kind of way). The 1st inning seemed to last for and hour, and the homeruns off our ace weren't just homeruns so much as this.

The type of hits where the outfield looks likes it's playing some kind of game of Red Light Green Light One Two Three. Except they're all on the Red Light phase of the game.

Ok, SPEAKING of inertia, immobility, this, etc...Robinson Cano's homerun in the 4th inning--the only run for the Yanks of the game, and only one of the 2 hits of the day (both by Cano)--crossed into Manny territory.

I said this last week (during the #42 costume party) about a Cano bomb:

I will say that Cano was about half a second away (ok, 0.42 seconds away) from crossing into "Locking Up a High and In Fast Ball Next Time He Sees McCarthy" territory.

Which is to say..well, you know. Pause. Like, a real pause.

Yeah, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because that stadium is so f'n annoying and weird and he probably got paralyzed while trying to track his shot (thought he really should just be taking off for 1st, no?) But it was a little much.

I only say this because if I were Cano, I'd want to adopt an "aw shucks, just trying to help team. Please. Thank you. Ma'am. Sir. Tiffany's Table Manners" type of attitude, in the wake of the whole "linked to Biogenesis" nonsense. For the record, I don't think Cano is on steroids. Seriously. I mean, I think almost everyone in the league is, but I don't think he is. His interviews are too candid. Really doesn't sound like he's lying at all.

Ah, whatever, he can pause at homeplate all he wants. He DID manage the only 2 hits off Moore, so live it up, big guy.

As for Moore: what the hell is your problem? 8IP, 9Ks, 2 hits. Go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog.

(Comparatively, our Fatso's line: 7 IP, 7 hits, 8Ks...3 homeruns. I'm not sure I would've kept him in for as long as Girardi did. He was struggling from the first batter. And ended up leaving game after 104 pitches. Just because our boy CAN go long into the game, doesn't mean we necessarily HAVE to have him do it, yeah?)

Alright, so it's after midnight, I gotta go force myself into bed so I can wake up in a panic every 15 minutes for the next 5 hours, for fear of not waking up.



The Devil Rays beat the Yankees, and I think we probably lost our right to quantifying the Yankees' recent success in terms of "won the last ___ of their ___ games."

Oh, also. Vernon Wells is a beast defensively. He's like the new Carl Crawford. YES! He is. Only he's old. I guess that's not irony so much as an oxymoron.

Jayson Nix=great job at 3rd. GGBG=great ABs, despite no hits.

It wasn't an off day for the Yankees, just Tubbo. The hits were hit hard albeit hit hard in the vicinity of ready fielders--mercifully, no one in the booth said, "Well, you can't ask for a better than that."

So, just as yesterday was a very Sunday-esque game, this was a very Monday-esque game. Which doesn't make an abundance of sense since both teams were playing on Monday, but only one team had a Monday-esque game. I don't care though. About the Monday-esque thing, not the loss. I care about that.

But it's Tuesday now technically, so let's move on. To the fallen prodigies. To Hughes v Price. Which doesn't even sound like a pitching matchup so much as it sounds like a court docket for a civil litigation suit or something. No plea deals. Just deal, Hughes. (See what I did there. Tuesday-esque.)