I was at Yankee Stadium tonight, making my Yankee-fan daughter happy by taking her to a game, watching Joba the Great look pretty ordinary and (this was my main focus) watching the out-of-town scoreboard to see what was going on in ChiTown.
Am I nuts or what?
As I watched the updates being posted, I could tell without any details available at all that the game between the Tribe and the Sox was taking a familiar path.
Lee and Danks matching each other inning after inning and the toothless Tribe offense being offensive, as it has been all year.
When the Yanks loss to Texas ended, the auxiliary scoreboard at Yankee Stadium showed the Tribe and the Sox tied at 1 in the 9th.
It seemed pretty clear to me at that point that after I battled with 50 thousand other New Yorkers to get out of the place, risked 18 fender benders trying to push my way out of the parking lot and drove home to the suburbs, that I would likely turn on my computer to find that one reliever or another had blown the game. I was not disappointed.
Tonight it was Joe Borowski, who blew his fourth save in 10 chances this season. The Tribe took the lead in the tenth only to have JoBo give it up (again) in the bottom of the inning.
Can the trade deadline get here fast enough? The sooner it does the sooner Borowski will be gone (if someone will take him). Whether gone through trade or simply banished, Borowski must go. There's no obvious choice to replace him, so maybe Wedge spends the last two months of the season holding open auditions. Maybe the closer of the future is on someone else's Triple-A team right now, about to change uniforms without knowing it just yet.
Someone - at least one guy - has to be given the shot in the last two months of this year to try to fill the job for next season. If that guy proves not to be on the roster, even after the trading deadline, then some money has to be shelled out to get a real closer.
Everyone laughed at the White Sox when they overspent for Scott Linebrink and Octavio Dotel this winter. But why is overpaying for a solid, shut-em-down bullpen considered to be foolish while paying huge bucks for a bat or a starter is seen as a great move by the front office.
We've seen it time and time again. You don't win division titles without a solid bullpen and the Tribe's pen is a mess. The first thing to do to fix it so spend the last two months trying to find out if they have someone to close out games next year already on their roster. I don't see anybody, but you've got to try.
Back to Joba the Great for a minute. This was my first chance to see him pitch in person, except possibly for one inning of relief late last season. He was anything but great tonight. He couldn't find home plate with a Garmin GPS - having to leave after four innings with his pitch count in the 90s.
Joba walked four and gave up five hits and two runs in his four innings. Of his 91 pitches, 49 were strikes and 42 were balls. Not too good.
Derek Jeter, my daughter's favorite, got the night off and the Yanks lost of course, so it wasn't the greatest of nights for my daughter. For me, it was a good - if painfully slow - game in which I had no rooting interest.
Am I nuts or what?
As I watched the updates being posted, I could tell without any details available at all that the game between the Tribe and the Sox was taking a familiar path.
Lee and Danks matching each other inning after inning and the toothless Tribe offense being offensive, as it has been all year.
When the Yanks loss to Texas ended, the auxiliary scoreboard at Yankee Stadium showed the Tribe and the Sox tied at 1 in the 9th.
It seemed pretty clear to me at that point that after I battled with 50 thousand other New Yorkers to get out of the place, risked 18 fender benders trying to push my way out of the parking lot and drove home to the suburbs, that I would likely turn on my computer to find that one reliever or another had blown the game. I was not disappointed.
Tonight it was Joe Borowski, who blew his fourth save in 10 chances this season. The Tribe took the lead in the tenth only to have JoBo give it up (again) in the bottom of the inning.
Can the trade deadline get here fast enough? The sooner it does the sooner Borowski will be gone (if someone will take him). Whether gone through trade or simply banished, Borowski must go. There's no obvious choice to replace him, so maybe Wedge spends the last two months of the season holding open auditions. Maybe the closer of the future is on someone else's Triple-A team right now, about to change uniforms without knowing it just yet.
Someone - at least one guy - has to be given the shot in the last two months of this year to try to fill the job for next season. If that guy proves not to be on the roster, even after the trading deadline, then some money has to be shelled out to get a real closer.
Everyone laughed at the White Sox when they overspent for Scott Linebrink and Octavio Dotel this winter. But why is overpaying for a solid, shut-em-down bullpen considered to be foolish while paying huge bucks for a bat or a starter is seen as a great move by the front office.
We've seen it time and time again. You don't win division titles without a solid bullpen and the Tribe's pen is a mess. The first thing to do to fix it so spend the last two months trying to find out if they have someone to close out games next year already on their roster. I don't see anybody, but you've got to try.
Back to Joba the Great for a minute. This was my first chance to see him pitch in person, except possibly for one inning of relief late last season. He was anything but great tonight. He couldn't find home plate with a Garmin GPS - having to leave after four innings with his pitch count in the 90s.
Joba walked four and gave up five hits and two runs in his four innings. Of his 91 pitches, 49 were strikes and 42 were balls. Not too good.
Derek Jeter, my daughter's favorite, got the night off and the Yanks lost of course, so it wasn't the greatest of nights for my daughter. For me, it was a good - if painfully slow - game in which I had no rooting interest.
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