"60% OF THE TIME, IT WORKS EVERY TIME."

Sure, you can sit there and tell me that mix and matching the bullpen with Rays batting should have lead to a Yankee win tonight in the Trop and sure, that statement may be true. But I thought as though there was too much overmanaging with the pen tonight... I don't know, that's just me. Oh, and that error by Mark Teixeira may have contributed too, but whatever. I'm not hammering my Yankees tonight...it was just a tough loss.

I'm not a Girardi hater, but I do hate the binder. I can close my eyes and see Girardi sitting at the post game Q & A right now. Then Mark Feinsand would ask "Do you think you mixed and matched too much?" I can see Joe looking dead in his eyes saying "60% of the time, it works every time."

OK, sure, the Yankees pen has been rolling. I love them right now, but if there are guys that can handle and inning or 2, you don't need to bring in lefties if they are rolling through the inning. Sometimes breaking up momentum for a lefty specialist breaks the flow. That's my opinion of course.

Now look, games against the Tampa Bay Rays are games we need to win. We didn't tonight, but when you look at each set of games, the bottom line is, we need to win the series, not 162 games. Bottom line, you win every series, you make the playoffs. That's why even though this loss stings, the Yankees know they need to just win the next 2 now.

Freddy Garcia pitched well tonight. I was proud of him. It was like old times, or should I say, last season. Freddy went 5.1 innings, he has 5 hits and only allowed 2 runs. Look, it's not outstanding, but it's good for what we needed. After that, you knew Girardi's binder was chomping at the bit and yes, it broke loose and the mix and match showed it's head.

Cody Eppley to Boone Logan to David Robertson to Clay Rapada to Chad Qualls. Look. This isn't game 7 of the World Series, and what I mean is, I find it hard to believe that the Yankees needed all these pitchers to hold down the mighty Rays. DRob clearly can handle an inning or 2, Cody Eppley can as well. Rapada and Boone are lefty specialists but did we need both of them tonight? My guess is it was probably just overdoing it. At the end of the day, all Joe's mix and matching didn't work tonight, but I suspect we didn't really need to in the first place.

Tonight's Yankee offense consisted of a few doubles, one by Derek Jeter and one by Mark Teixeira and a sacrifice fly by Curtis Granderson. Matt Moore pitched 7 innings, allowed 9 hits but only 3 runs. He held down the Yankees pretty good, tip your cap. Again, what are you going to do, it's a big loss, but it's not the end of the season. In the end, the Yankees will be back...tomorrow they win game 2 and then on to win the series against the Rays.

Sure, 60% of the time, it works every time...but... that doesn't make sense.



Final tonight: Rays 4 - Yankees 3.

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