The Art Neuro Weblog

When The Party Is Over
That's it. The Yanks lost again, thus ending their 2004 campaign with an ignominious 10-3 loss to the damned Red Sox. (I guess it had to happen one of these years where the Red Sox finally got up over the Yankees. I don't know, I feel like a relative died.

How did the Yankees lose Game 7?
The short answert is this: They lost it with the 3 pitchers they acquired to replace Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite and David Wells. It seemed like at the end of last season, the three men were done in New York City; Roger Clemens had spent the entire seaosn saying he was retiring, and David Wells simply broke down in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series so he looked done asa dinner. Andy Pettite also made noises about wanting to go home, and so would ot be pursuaded to stay. Had the Yankees signed him, he would be missing in October anyway because of his elbow that requires surgery.

So in their stead, the Yankees traded for and signed Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez, and during the deadline trades, acquired Esteban Loaiza for Jose Contreras. Onpaper, these were as good a move as you could make. When healthy, Brown, Vazquez, and Loaiza are pretty good DIPS pitchers. So tonight, we find they served up 9 runs between them. And then Tom Gordon gave up another homer just to make sure the Yankee Offence would have absolutely no chance.

Sat-heads laugh at the cliches in the game such as 'Pitching and Defence win in the Post Season', but the proof of the pudding was in the scoreline tonight. Derek Lowe threw a 1-hitter through 6 innings; Brown, Vazuqez and Loaiza buried the Yankees deeper than the Mariana Sea Trench. Watching those three, i was surprised at how often they started with ball one. Or give up a homer. Why couldn't they just throw strikes? They kept getting behind the count against the Boston hitters, and they would eventually allow them on to base.

In essence, the Yankees started the season a very flawed team, short on good starting pitching. In the last game of the ALCS, this fatal flaw came back and bit them.

How Did the Yankees Lose The Series?
The Yankees lost the series after they couldn't close out Game 4, and then Game 5. Both were games where they were leading going into the 8th inning, and they managed to cough up the lead in both games. Then, they lost Game 6 to a resurrected Curt Schilling. But mostly, the Yankees lost the series on not having a deep bullpen.

I ought to write some more about all of this, but I'm a little too exhausted to write anything more. The Post-Mortems will flood the Net in 48 hours. I'll let you know what's what, then.

- Art Neuro