The White Sox started their day dealing with a bomb scare outside their hotel in Times Square. You'd think it could only go up from there, but you'd be wrong.
At least everybody's safe. Street vendors record the save.
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Sunday summed up in a picture:
It was a long hot day, so I'm not going to bother stringing together all my thoughts in a narrative.
No. 1: The Yankees hit as many line drives as the White Sox don't.
Even their outs were suspenseful. Mark Kotsay had to make a leaping catch at the wall that may have stolen a homer. Juan Pierre had a handful of tough liners to catch, and he actually made them look easy.
The Sox are dead-last in BABIP by a huuuuuuuuge margin, but when there's a real offense to compare the Sox against, you start to think that bad "luck" is well-deserved.
No. 2: Gordon Beckham gets out of sync pretty easily.
Beckham struck out six times combined over Saturday and Sunday. He's either late on picking up the ball, the swing gets longer, or both.
No. 3: Joe West wasn't wrong ... but he's to blame, too.
It shouldn't take four hours to complete a nine-inning game, and the Yankees do a lot of little things to drag the pace down. I'd love to a see a home plate ump put a harness on Jorge Posada and pull him back every time he tries to jog to the mound. Phil Hughes tried picking off Paul Konerko twice -- and Konerko was standing on the bag both times.
But the umpires could help matters by calling strikes. On Saturday, everybody in the building thought Randy Williams had struck out Posada -- including Posada himself -- but Mark Wegner didn't give Williams the inside corner. On Sunday, Dan Iassogna makes a scene with A.J. Pierzynski, continuing an argument after Pierzynski turns away, and that leads to Ozzie Guillen getting ejected over the course of minutes.
(Addition: Just posted a photo gallery of Guillen's ejection on the Facebook page.)
There are a lot of missed strike calls over the course of a ballgame on both sides. Calling the actual zone would do the most to speed up the game.
No. 4: Would you have rather seen Nick Swisher hit well, or Javier Vazquez pitch well?
I still don't know how to feel about these two guys.
I always had sympathy for Vazquez because he was mis-marketed as an ace and a front-line starter, when his flaw -- an inability to pitch from the stretch -- was too glaring to overlook. He ultimately helped the Sox, but not to the extent that guys like Guillen and Hawk Harrelson expressed was possible.
Then he went and flopped over three innings on Saturday, and it felt pretty satisfying to be on the other side of it for once.
Swisher was all about marketing himself, and it turned out to be false advertising when things went south. He brought it upon himself, and thus deserves a greater wrath.
But that trade was so stupid -- especially when one of the knocks against him is that he showed his teammates his bobblehead (the horror!) -- that the Sox kind of deserve to get slapped around by it, karmically speaking.
That said, I did enjoy this Ozzie quote:
"That's the way he is," Guillen said. "Good for him. Enjoy it. I wish he could do it for me, he was a very horse(bleep) player for me.''
No. 5: Mark Teahen better start hitting again.
Teahen has four times as many strikeouts (eight) as he does hits (two) over his last 20 at-bats. His line is down to .235/.342/.385, and any further slide isn't going to be able to make up for his glove, which has been noticeably ineffective. I like The Cheat's line:
"And there's aball hit past Teahen" is the second most annoyingly obvious sound of theseason, behind "softly hit ball by Pierre"
He reminds me of Josh Fields defensively, with the awkward matador half-slide dives that don't work, except Fields didn't have the random wild-assed throws.
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Christian Marrero Reading Room:
*Beckham took Guillen's comments about his play in stride.
*Sorry, Donnyacs: Donny Lucy was optioned to Charlotte, and Ramon Castro will make his 2010 debut.
*Tdogg tries to figure out which April stats are the most indicative of future success (or lack thereof) going forward.
*Oral Sox has a new podcast up.
*Is Alex Rios done celebrating the birth of a child yet?
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Minor league roundup:
- Charlotte 4, Toledo 0
- Daniel Hudson says, "Don't worry your pretty little heads about me" with this line: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 10 K. And he needed only 93 pitches.
- C.J. Retherford might be turning it around, as he went 3-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.
- Jordan Danks doubled and walked in five PAs, and didn't strike out.
- Tyler Flowers went 0-for-4; Dayan Viciedo went 1-for-3.
- Winston-Salem 14, Wilmington 7
- Justin Greene continues to power up, driving in six runs with a 3-for-4, one-homer day. He also contributed an outfield assist.
- Brandon Short went 3-for-6 with a double and two RBI. He struck out twice.
- Jon Gilmore doubled and struck out in six ABs.
- Jordan Cheatham singled, tripled, walked and drove in three.
- Charles Leesman was unimpressive in victory: 5 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 3 BB, 1 K.
- Kyle Bellamy threw two scoreless innings.
- Birmingham vs. Huntsville PPD
- Kannapolis OFF
