STOP BLAMING THE PITCHING, THAT'S NOT WHY WE LOST!

I'm ready to move on to next season, but I guess we have all winter to talk about that. If we really want to talk about "what went wrong" for the Yankees we need to take a hard look at some of the stats here and understand what fell apart. It's easy to make emotional statements about the ALCS but, what about the facts?

So yesterday, we posted CASHMAN AND BOONE SAY THAT PITCHING DID NOT COST THE YANKEES THE SERIES. Awesome read by my colleague Suzie, but I disagree. And that's what makes Bleeding Yankee Blue unique. No agenda. Diverse opinion. It's the beauty of working here. We work as a team but, we don't always share each others opinions. This is one of those times.

I agree pitching wasn't perfect. We do not have as strong a rotation like the Houston Astros do and I tip my cap to them. However, despite that fact the Yankees pitched pretty well. Again, not perfect....but pretty well. Did they do enough? No, but did the pitching cost us the series? I have to say no. The starting pitching did okay. Luis Severino was tough to watch and the starters once again didn't pitch deep into games like we needed them to.

We can dive deeper and say that our relievers also weren't at their best. Adam Ottavino did disappoint me, not going to lie there. J.A. Happ also struggled. It wasn't fun watching Jose Altuve take Aroldis Chapman deep in Game 6 for a walk off but those things happened. These moments are NOT what caused the Yankees to lose the series, but the lack of fundamentals did.

When you breakdown the pitching, the Yankees actually had a better ERA than the Astros according to Baseballreference.com HERE. The Yankees pitched to a 3.13 ERA, vs the Astros who had a 3.44 ERA. So despite some big errors from our bullpen and some of our starters not pitching like or better than Gerrit Cole they kept us in the game. Here's where it went wrong....

It's a familiar story we have talked about before. The Yankees left too many guys on base. The Astros left their fair share too but let's break it down.

So were the Yankees terrible with Runners In Scoring Position? Absolutely! But, so were the Astros. This series came down to moments, and capitalizing on mistakes. The Yankees made the mistake of leaving MORE guys on base and not driving them in. Justin Verlander was beatable, and so was Cole for that matter. They got hits, but they couldn't bring them home. The Astros were able to take advantage of our mistakes, and we simply couldn't do that with them.

I understand the frustration about pitching. Our rotation has been a weakness. We needed to address it last winter and we didn't do enough. I still like the James Paxton acquisition, but we needed more. Hopefully we get it this winter. Actually, we BETTER! The talent out there this season is great. There are more than enough arms out there to make the pitching better. Bottom line is....the pitching did not lose the series.

We can't blame a lack of pitching for this loss. The stats say the pitching was better than the Astros so we should feel GOOD about that. What we should not feel good about is the hitting. You can't leave 10 guys on base and expect to win even if Masahiro Tanaka went out there and threw a no-hitter. The offense didn't do its job. The 42 men left on base and better team RISP prove that. Does it suck that Chapman pitched a walk off homerun in game 6? YES! But so do the 8 runners that were left on base before Altuve even got up to the plate. That wakoff could've been avoided.

Now, can we stop blaming the pitching and stop talking about the pipe dream of beating the Nationals if we did win the ALCS? That's the past. We made it to the postseason with the pitching we had so it wasn't a deal breaker. Let's talk about 2020 and that starting pitcher we want to get instead! It's time to move on.

--Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @nyprincessj