It was tough to see just how effective Lee was from where I was sitting, so I have to say upon watching the highlights when I got home, that his curve looked unbelievable. The offense was okay, we had quite a few baserunners, but still not hitting the ball with any real authority.

Marte’s single was nice, but I thought the rope he hit to centerfield was the most impressive contact he made. From my point of view above home plate, it looked initially like it was going to line drive out of the park, but the Melk man made a pretty nice play on it. Hopefully Wedge notices and continues to give Andy some at bats.

There were tons of Tribe fans at the game and made an impressive showing in terms of the noise and cheering on of the team. Also, it is raining at the moment outside and looks like it is not going away anytime soon, so today’s game might be a rain out.

I only caught the last couple of innings, but I was impressed by Betancourt again. He looked like last year’s model. Really slowing the game down, hitting the corners, making batters miss, etc. Let’s hope the Raffies are back! Good Jhonny again as well, it appears. Hafner’s at bat was indeed a disaster. Maybe he needs SEVERAL days off to regroup and start over. The offense still needs him. I think that’s 4-0 when Ben Fran plays? Go figure.

Sportscenter had a largely meaningless but interesting little tidbit today. Let’s see if I can get this right.

Including Cliff, 5 pitchers have ever started the season 6-0 in the modern era. They are:

Fernando Valenzuela
Randy Johnson
Pedro Martinez
and, ahh somebody else. Maybe Koufax? B-R is having some script problems…

Anyway, the other 4 all went on to win the Cy Young.

Could you imagine? CC and Cliff going back to back Cys? How improbable. Bizarre year, this 2008 so far.

That can’t be right—Wang was 6-0 until we beat him yesterday.

Boy, Hafner’s AB was indeed terrible. Watch his hips. They are opening up immediately and he is really pulling off the ball. That’s why he can’t do anything with balls down or on the outer half of the plate. The second pitch was a fastball just off the outside corner and Pronk practically fell down in an attempt to reach it. He just slapped at it. Again, I think this all stems from a lack of confidence in getting around on inside fastballs. The hips open up and he can’t cover the plate and he can’t stay back on the offspeed stuff.

The problem is that Hafner has been unable to fix it. He knows the big problem, Shelton knows it, everyone connected with the big-league staff knows it. There may be other issues too, but this is the big one.

A couple of weeks ago I posted that, despite the results, Hafner was really looking a lot better at the plate. That went away during the home series against the Yankees, and now he’s looking like he did for most of last year. Like Andrew just posted, we can’t quit on $58 million…but that contract is looking like a huge albatross.

wins are matters dontyaknow

Is this some new LOLCatz I’m not down with?

First, let me say Cliff Lee was just Unconscious Kitten last night. Those dinks really underscore how tough a perfect game would be, but by god he had the capabilities. He did start to miss his spots a little in the last two innings, so I’m glad some of those cheap hits didn’t extend him too much where damage could be inflicted.
I don’t know if this has been mentioned in the game thread, but I played our favorite game (“If you take out this, his numbers looks like this”), and his ERA would be in the 0.20 area were it not for that home run.

As for Yankee Stadium, I wish just once they’d put a mic in front of a player/manager’s face and he’d say “Who gives a crap? It’s a ballpark.” I mean for chrissakes. Underwood or Manning made the comment, “Let’s hope they can’t take the Aura with them.” I know he meant it from an intimidation standpoint, but I’d love if he were right from an annoying media standpoint.

Great game. Very fun to watch. But I was pretty pissed at the end there. Let me start by saying I am a card-carrying Hire Wedge Club member. I just can’t get behind that pinch hit. We’re winning 3-0. We don’t need that 4th run. Marte just got a hit in his last AB, finally, and he’s putting the ball in the air WAY more than Hafner is. With the game not on the line and our need to make decisions regarding Marte, why is he not batting? I understand I’m preaching to a choir here, but that was really frustrating. And that’s not hindsight talking. Even if Hafner hit a grand slam I would have rather seen what Marte could do. If we’re down 3-0, I understand completely.

I just hope that the real Cliff Lee keeps fighting the Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada on the frontier of Rylos while his beta unit keeps piling up these Nintendo numbers.

The worst was listening to Hamilton building up Marte’s at bat telling us how a sinkerballer plays into his strengths and how he hit the ball hard his last time up. Heagan chimed in to say that after seven ABs in two games, he may finally be comfortable hitting up there.

“And he won’t get a chance…”

So are those offers to Pittsburgh for Jason Bay and St. Louis for Anthony Reyes involving Clifford off the table yet?

The December GM meetings seem like decades ago.

I wonder if Joe Sheehan at baseball prospectus is still not a believer in Lee. He made the silly argument that his stats don’t matter as he has faced weak offenses. Now I guess the Yankees are a weak offense also. Anybody who shuts down any major league team (even you SF) has pitched a great game.

What if Cliff Lee’s only doing so well because we talked trash about him all winter? (Gasp!) EVERYBODY INSULT CLIFF LEE.

Watched the game on ESPN and didn’t get a chance to gamethread with you guys as mrs. mrich was using the laptop.

Lee was astoundingly good, again, but I think I probably ended up with the same feeling as a lot of other people after this one—just a sick feeling in my stomach after watching that horrendous pinch-hit AB by Hafner.

I guess I can understand the rationale behind Wedge’s decision, as you couldn’t pinch hit for Shop, and Pronk is still in some sense The Big Bat, if only because of his contract and his fading reputation. So sending Garko up there instead of Hafner, even though it might have been a better tactical move (although I’d have preferred Marte get the chance) simply wasn’t going to happen for political reasons. But at this point it seems like Hafner is already 0-2 whenever he leaves the dugout. I mean, it’s like clockwork: take strike 1 down the middle, foul off the next pitch, and then protect the plate for a couple of pitches before making poor contact and grounding or popping out.

But the at bat last night, with that little squib that went maybe 2 feet from the plate and led to an easy double play… I mean, what can you say. That honestly overshadowed Lee’s effort for me. I’m beyond worried about Hafner at this point; I’m seriously starting to wonder how long they can keep him on the roster like this and what the FO’s options are. It might be “phantom injury” time pretty soon just to give him a 2 week vacation on the DL and pray he can start to fix his swing.

So let’s see, my observations about the game last night:

- Yankee Stadium is a weird place. It may be “the house that Ruth built” but it’s really got that 70’s concrete monstrosity feel to it, so I don’t think bulldozing it means we’ll be losing a gem or anything.

- it’s such a pleasure watching Derek Jeter fail when you’re surrounded by fans cheering wildly for him.

- watched the Indians take BP before the game, which was pretty fun. Hafner was out there for a bit & he absolutely destroyed a couple of pitches to the second deck in right, which led me to get my hopes up, of course. I’m not even going to talk about the pinch-hitting fun that went on there, bleh.

- watching pitchers out there putting as little effort as possible into shagging flyballs is funny, too. Also, at one point during BP both CC and Mastny were standing next to someone (Byrd, maybe?) and they both totally dwarfed him.

- Cliff Lee is amazing.

- a LOT of people split early. I realize this was brought up by someone else talking about Tuesday’s game, but I still couldn’t believe how many people left after the 7th inning in a game they only trailed 3-0.

- Dellucci was the recipient of a lot of boos after Tuesday’s heroics. I kinda loved that.

So yeah, it was fun. I’d definitely do it again next year, maybe try to take a bigger contingent of Indians fans up with me. I was surpised at the number of people there in Tribe gear, actually, but I also saw on the scoreboard that there was some sort of Ohio State alumni group there, too, which probably helped up the Cleveland fan ratio.

I think you guys are all totally nuts, obsessing over Hafner’s pinch-squib.

One, a play like that is a fluke. It doesn’t correlate to anything.

Two, this has nothing to do with one guy’s confidence or another’s. It’s a book move.

Three, it’s an obvious book move. Lefty, righty—do I have to draw you a picture? The book is right about this one.

Four, Hafner may be struggling — he may need to go to a sanitarium — but hey, it isn’t like Marte has been setting the world on fire. You know I don’t blame Marte for that, but it’s still there.

Five, for all the above reasons, this isn’t like last year’s BS where Wedge would pinch-hit Blake for Marte.

Six, Albaladejo held righties to .130-.203-185 in Columbus last year. I’d offer more data if I had it - MinorLeagueSplits is offline for pre-2008 - but you’re going to find out that he’s somewhere in the range from typically strong right-vs-right to total beast.

In sum, the idea that Marte was more likely to get a hit or a walk in that exact situation is, frankly, nuts, and the idea that he was less likely to hit into a DP is dubious at best.

Be positive, guys. Cliff Lee seems to be insane, for real.,

I know it may be one the least of our problems right now, but is anyone else concerned that we pretty much only have a 3 or 4-man bullpen? I mean, Wedge has always not used guys for long periods of time, but I’m pretty sure I don’t even know who Tom Mastny and Breslow look like, and it’s only May.

Here let me help. Mastny from Indonesia and Breslow’s the other one.

laughable-looking lineup today, though this year when does it not look terrible.

Why the hell isn’t my reply button working?

By the way, Andrew was right. It has cleared up a bit outside, not raining anymore. I am not sure how well Mid-town Manhattan correlates with the Bronx, but judging by the current weather, there will be some baseball.

i would be bummed if i had to sit after that pinch hit dp last night.