Game Four

Girardi rolled the dice and won. Sabathia wasn’t lights out (10 base runners in 6.2 innings for a WHIP of 1.49), but was good enough. He can’t wait for the Series to end so he doesn’t have to pitch to Chase Utley anymore.

Manuel rolled the dice, too, in a different way, and did okay. Cliff Lee had never started on three days’ rest, and he already had 260+ innings on his arm this year. If Manuel started him and he blew up, there was no good fallback position. Blanton was fine after a shaky first inning; he wasn’t the reason the Phillies lost. (Brad Lidge, Brad Lidge, Brad Lidge.)

Fox has gone overboard with their heavy-handed approach to making MLB kiss their asses. The first three games of the Series started at 7:57. Last night they said they’d be on after The OT, their NFL post-game show. Football games all finish in the 7:15-7:30 time frame, the OT runs, and Curt, Terry, Howie, Michael, and Jimmy spend ten minutes bullshitting to get us to 8:00, when the baseball pre-game show started. It lasted twenty minutes, with no segment longer than two before commercial interruption. First pitch was actually 8:22. Television used to allow viewers the illusion they were showing commercials to pay for the programming. Now they’ve abandoned all pretense. Shows are broadcast because the suits don’t think they can get us to watch nothing but commercials for hours at a time. They would if they could, though.

Fox’s insistence on pushing baseball back into the November sweeps period raises an interesting question: What will they do if conditions dictate a World Series game on the night of a presidential election? Not cover the election? Or make baseball take yet another day off?

The late start must have pushed the game beyond home plate umpire Mike Everitt’s bed time. Anything close might as well have been decided with a coin toss. No consistency at all. His no call, then half-assed safe signal on Ryan Howard’s game-tying second inning run—where Howard missed the plate and Everitt appeared to know it—was disgraceful.

Posada didn’t hold the ball; Howard missed the plate. The correct call is what Everitt did at first: nothing. He’s neither safe nor out. Posada knew he hadn’t made the tag, assumed Howard was safe, and threw to second to try to get the trail runner. Howard walked off the field. Everitt saw him leaving, and gave a sorta kinda “safe” signal. Howard should have been called out when he got to the dugout. Everitt apparently didn’t want a big argument from the Phillies, and figured the Yankees were good with it, as Posada neglected to go after Howard. And they pay Everitt for this.

McCarver wondered why Posada gave Sabathia multiple signs, even when there was no runner on second. A better question would have been, why was he flashing signs at all? Posada went out to talk to him after virtually every pitch for some batters.

A-Rod watch – A double and hit by pitch in five plate appearances. Run scored, run batted in, and a strikeout. Series average: .143.

Game Four Tim McCarver Moment - Comparing Posada to Tom Brady because he was “calling audibles” during his countless trips to the mound.