I was once asked to write "99 Reasons Why Baseball Is Better Than Football." I thought it would take me all day, but I finished before lunch. I started with "Baseball has no halftime."
-- Thomas Boswell, The Washington Post.
The great baseball columnist had a point. Unlike soccer, no one can really describe baseball with the words so often used to describe soccer: "A game of two halves." But that's pretty much what the Yankees played last night, in the opener of a 2-game series against the Atlanta Braves at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees wasted little time. DJ LeMahieu led off the bottom of the 1st with a hit. After an Aaron Judge lineout, Aaron Hicks tried to bnt DJ over, but Braves starting pitcher Dany "Touki" Toussaint threw the ball away for an error. And then Luke Voit crushed a home run to make it 3-0 Bronx Bombers. They picked up 3 more runs in the 3rd inning, and 2 more in the 5th, including yet another homer by Judge.
(Toussaint is from the Fort Lauderdale area, and is of Haitian descent. His nickname is a combination of his parents' surnames, Toussani and Kiti.)
An 8-0 lead should have been plenty, and Jordan Montgomery was pitching like it. He got into trouble in the 2nd and 3rd innings, but kept the shutout going through 5. He allowed a 2-run homer in the 6th, and Aaron Boone decided not to take chances, bringing David Hale in to pitch the 7th. He began that inning by allowing 2 singles, and then got a strikeout.
And then Boone took him out, and brought in Adam Ottavino. This made absolutely no sense: The Yankees still led by 6 runs, Hale had gotten the previous hitter out, and he, Adam Ottavino, and the next batter, Dansby Swanson, were all righthanded hitters. It wasn't like he made the Boone Logan "Lefty-one-out-guy" move (which should never be done, ever).
Well, we can't exactly blame Ottavino for what happened next. Swanson hit a grounder that LeMahieu mishandled, everybody was safe, and a run scored. Despite allowing a walk (which, as we have seen, can be deadly to a team's chances of winning), Ottavino got out of the inning with just the 1 run being scored. The Yankees still led, 8-4, and got the run back in the bottom of the inning.
Not letting Ottavino pitch the 8th was understandable. Bringing in Luis Cessa, who should not even be pitching in the major leagues, was not. The inning opened with shortstop Gleyber Torres mishandling a ball that Didi Gregorius probably would have been able to handle.
(Until Torres helps the Yankees win a World Series, then, no matter what he does that's good, I will still insist that Brian Cashman's moves to accommodate him, including getting rid of Aroldis Chapman, Starlin Castro and Gregorius, were stupid.)
But the error unnerved Cessa, which is hardly an achievement. He bracketed a flyout with 2 doubles, driving in 2 runs. Boone took Cessa out, and replaced him with Chad Green, who got a strikeout and a groundout to end the threat. Zack Britton bounced back from a bad last outing, and pitched a 1-2-3 9th to end it.
Yankees 9, Braves 6. WP: Montgomery (2-1). SV: Britton (6, although it could be argued that Green really saved the game). LP: Toussaint (0-1).
The series continues tonight. It will continue without Judge, whom Boone says he is holding back due to "lower body tightness." Just say his legs don't feel good. There will be a day off tomorrow, and then the Boston Red Sox come in.
Tonight's starting pitchers are Masahiro Tanaka for the Yankees, and Huascar Ynoa, a 22-year-old Dominican righthander, for the Braves. A pitcher the Yankees have never seen before is usually a bad sign.
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