Athletics 5, Yanks 4 - River Avenue Blues

Player	WPA	pLI	Pitcher	WPA	pLI
Giambi	.177	2.22	Vizaino	.213	2.78
Cano	.090	1.79	Proctor	.050	1.13
Jeter	.082	1.15	Myers	.048	1.82
Alex	.048	1.86	Igawa	-.022	1.02
Posada	-.030	1.60	Farnsworth	-.122	1.33
KT	-.062	2.38	Bruney	-.205	3.03
Abreu	-.104	1.65
Damon	-.147	1.36
Melky	-.163	2.23
Minky	-.353	2.23

Not much to add to Ben’s comments. Badly managed, badly played. Oh yeah, and Minky stinks. Big time.

I would like to see two tidbits of conventional wisdom erased from baseball groupthink: the hit and run and not using your closer on the road in a tie game. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I missed a lot of the Igawa innings, so I’m not going to trash him or praise him. It just hurts that Chavez took him deep on a pitch left up. Tsk tsk tsk.

At this point, we’re better off playing Giambi at first and letting the pitcher hit.

John

Settle down.
Farnsworth sucks, but his demotion last night from 8th inning to 7th inning is the sign of a good change. If Vizcaino continues to pitch well, Proctor gets back on track, and Henn’s low number of K’s doesn’t catch up with him, then sure, Farnsworth could be gone entirely.
Did you leave Minky off your WPA chart intentionally? Was his negative contribution incalculable? I expect to see some of these relievers shipped off for a more traditional 1B. I hate to be the Minky apologist, but he’s not that bad.
Incidentally, I was listening to the radio broadcast last night, and Sterling said the Yanks stranded 11, but the A’s stranded 12.
http://www.riveraveblues.com Joseph P.

I must have unintentionally left off Minky when I saw his abysmal WPA. As a hitter, you have to try to hurt your team that much.

I think Farnsworth will be fine. As we’ve been noting here, his velocity is down, and he looked great the first week of the season. He could just be going through a dead arm period.