Bruney finds a way as Yanks win in 13
-
-
- April
- 15
-
Joe Torre said that Brian Bruney was, “out there until he got a decision. I’m glad it was the right one.”
Bruney was quite jacked up about fanning Travis Buck to end the game. According to Bruney, when Buck scored the winning run off him on Friday night, he slammed his batting helmet. Too much for Bruney’s tastes apparently.
“Our guys win with class,” he said.
Hey, whatever works. Torre said Andy Pettitte kept volunteering to pitch but they didn’t have anybody else who could start Sunday’s game.
Torre said he hoped Krazy Kyle Farnsworth would benefit from his good inning.
As for Giambi?
“Everybody wants to try and win the game,” Torre said. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”
Said Giambi: “We might look back this was the beginning. Hopefully this is the one that really turns it around for us.”
So there you have it. Just another game.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 2:11 am by Peter Abraham.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
Chad Jennings
Sam Borden
Great win!!!
Gutsy outing by Bruney who you could tell was nearly out of gas. Guy was throwing barely 90 on his fastball.
He deserves the week off
Need a big outing from Pettitte thats for sure. 7 IP please tommarow alright Andy?
Again, glad we got the W. I would of been an angry puppy if I had to stay up for back to back extra inning losses.
Buck was also quoted as saying he had triple on his mind off the bat because he knew Damon had a weak arm. That’s an accurate comment, but I wonder what the Yankees think about a rookie making such a brash comment about a vet. Did anyone ask Damon, et al. about the quote?
Bruney swigs the hot unleaded
What’s up with Jeter’s defense? At this pace, Jeter will have as many errors as A-Rod will have homers. Is Jessica Biel at the games or something?
Second error is not Jeter’s fault….
Bruney has the heart of a lion.
Great job of the team pulling that one out. There were quite a few times in that game when I wasn’t so sure, but what a gratifying win.
Farns kept it together and Bruney was fantastic. Giambi crushing that ball was incredible. Definitely worth staying up to see.
Bruney deserves an enormous amount of credit. He threw 36 pitches last night and was very clearly running on fumes in the 13th, but he got the job done. Giambi deserves credit for the home run of course, but yet again this bullpen bailed the Yankees out, big time. They all need a week or so off.
They would have sent Cairo the mound before Pettitte
What a fantastic pickup Bruney was. His K/9 is off the chart.
THE SECOND ERROR WAS Jeters fault. true Phelps could have made the play but that was a rushed bad throw.
Overall their defense is pathetic..
Posado should have caught that pop foul also. That caused Bruney 10 more pitches….
their pen is pent, no Bruney or farnsworth SUnday for sure….
well, looks like i missed the end of another long game, and i’m sure i missed some of anaconda’s wit and wisdom.
that day off monday is going to feel real good for them.
Sure will Kasey, but first they need to get through the 14 innings tomorrow!!
How nice it would’a been if this was Game 3 of the series. Yet, we find the Yanks going into Tomorrow’s game with a horribly spent pen. Hopefully, the lukewarm Yankee bats will turn into flame throwers to give our pen a much deserved rest.
As I see it, our defense — however error-prone and hazardous to this year’s campaign or our collective mental health — shouldn’t be something we can’t overcome with our offense. ‘Cause strange as it may sounds, the most error-prone fielders, often times are also the most impressive/productive at the plate. Could I use an improvement on the D? Hell yes! But I guess I’ve learned to live with our stellar-one-day-god-awful-the-next defense at this point. What kills me is that, even with all those runs given back via error, shouldn’t we be scoring more with all the .300 above bats we have??????
Normally I’m disinclined to second-guess Torre after a win. However …
Torre’s priority last night should have been to rest the pen. Pulling a starter who is cruising, after 78 pitches, after 5.1 IP, does not rest the pen. Pete rightly praises Bruney for gutting it out in the 12th and 13th, but Rasner should have gutted it out through the 6th and even 7th if he still had it.
Let’s play a game. Say you are managing the Yankees and your sole job is to prevent the opposing team from scoring any runs in one frame. You can pick any reliever, all of whom are fully-rested to pitch that frame. Who do you choose?
Same situation but add these facts: your choices are limited to four relievers, Vizcaino, Farnsworth, Rivera, and Bruney; only Rivera is rested out of that group; Vizcaino has appeared in nearly every game of the season; and Farnsworth pitched the last two games and looked awful in them. Now who do you choose? Torre was faced with this question in the ninth and picked Vizcaino. Then in the tenth he picked Farnsworth. Only next did he pick Rivera. This is terrible, mindless managing.
But the dogmatism did not stop there, because Torre went to Bruney in the 12th, the same Bruney who pitched two innings the night before and needed rest more than anyone else, and *the last reliever in the pen.* Why? Because Torre vowed not to use Rivera (the same Rivera who is both the best reliever on the team and, currently, the most rested) for back-to-back innings. And if Rivera had gone back out in the 12th, Torre would have broken his vow. Joe Torre is a man of his word! Unfortunately he is also a bad manager.
On a lighter note, Mientkiewicz pinch-hit for Phelps against Street, which struck me as pretty funny. Apparently, Mientkiewicz has a better chance of hitting Street than Blanton.
I should add something positive to balance out that last post. My fiancee Katherine and I stayed up to watch that the end of the game against our better judgment. I had already watched Friday’s extra-inning loss on Yankees Encore on Saturday morning, and did not feel like seeing another extra-inning loss on Saturday night. Top of the tenth, we agreed to turn off the TV if the Yankees didn’t score. Katherine, who had been fighting to stay awake, got a second wind. The TV stayed on. Top of the eleventh we made the same agreement to turn off the TV and once again broke it. Top of the twelfth, nothing was said about turning off the TV. We were in it to the end.
Thirteenth, we watched Giambi homer, followed by Bruney pulling himself together and closing out the game. We basked in the satisfaction of having made the right decision and fell asleep.
Jeremy, Torre has been a below average bullpen manager for years. nothing that happened last night should have come as a surprise.
someone in the organization REALLY needs to sit Torre down and explain to him that it is OK to use Rivera in a tie game on the road. if Farnsworth lost that game last night, and the yankees lost TWO extra inning games in a row with the greatest reliever of all time never removing his jacket, that would have been completely inexcusable.
this slavery to the “save” statistic already cost the Yankees a World Series (Jeff Weaver anyone?) and he still hasn’t learned from it. It’s really not that hard: on the road in extra innings, IF YOU GIVE UP A RUN, YOU LOSE. that’s it. you can’t keep saving your best reliever until you score. you might not get that chance. you use your best reliever for as long as you can and you give your offense as many chances as possible. if mariano is done before you score, you deal with who will save the game later. you can’t let an inferior pitcher lose the game for you before you’ve gone to your best.
also, travis buck may have picked the wrong dude to irritate.
Stuart, it was a tough catch for jorge, do you think the a’s bench was helping as to where he was? They were probably yelling watch it watch it, to make him think he was near the stairs. at home maybe you could kill him for that, since he knows the field, but on the road, you can’t.
“That caused Bruney 10 more pitches….”
3 pitches.
The pitching mismanagement is a combination play. Its Torre and Guidry. The pitching coach can’t be absolved of blame.
Both guys have to do a better job of managing arms. Its comical at times to see how they overwork some guys and put severe restrictions on others.
I, too agree that the priority last night should have been bullpen preservation, prior to the start of the game. If Rasner needed 120 pitches to throw 7 innings last night, so what? If he can’t go in his next start, just call someone up from AAA to make the start. They have Wang, Karstans and Mussina on the horizon for their comebacks. They don’t need to baby Rasner.
Is it really worth saving Darrell Rasner over the entire bullpen?
I know its a point that can be debated but, sometimes, one guy has to “take one for the team” instead of an entire bullpen being on fumes 10 days into the season.
The pitching mismanagement is a real issue with the Yankees, IMO. If 40 year old Curt Schilling can pitch 7-8 innings a start, Darrell Rasner can be stretched out for one start.
If A-Rod made all these errors like Jeter, so many would be ready to run him out of town. Why are the same characters defending Jeter when he is sub par defensively. In additon to these errors, how many times we see that he has no range to his left and opposing hitters get so many singles in stead of outs…
If you want to be so demanding on A-Rod, that is fine. Then be fair to yourself and expect the same from Jeter or any other player for that matter including Abreau.
[...] The bullpen returned to flawlessness, throwing 7.2 scoreless innings and giving up just 2 hits. Henn, Myers, Vizcaino, Rivera and Bruney all have ERA’s of under 1.30. Red Sox castoff, Lenny Dinardo pitched well in 3 innings of relief for Oakland, but was the victim of the Giambi long ball to give him his first loss this season. Brian Bruney picked up the Yankees win one night after he lost a game, and he was more than a little excited to have it come against Travis Buck. [...]
Interesting points Jeremy, but had Torre left Mo in for a 2nd inning he’d be unavailable today, Bruney still would have pitched and also likely been unavailable today after a 36 pitch outing and then back last night.
At least now Myers, Henn and Mo can go today. In your scenario only the first 2 remain, same game result.
On Rasner, I’d have stuck with him a little more as well. Pete made the point that it was only his 2nd start, but he actually threw a couple more pitches in the first one. To be a little fair, though, the pen is gassed predominantly because of 2 extras games. 6 extra innings in 2 days would blow out anybody’s pen. But they should consider sending Rasner down if Moose and Pavano look okay today, bringing Britton or somebody up.
as usual Sleepy Torre makes a mess of managing the bullpen. Why not keep Mo in for a second inining. He may not wear out MO but the rest of the bullpen is in trouble.
I agree with you. Torre has now lost more than he has won. His pitching management acumen remains suspect at best, most recently evidenced by last night’s debacle.
Anyone into Sabremetrics? I am not sure where, but he makes the point that it is far more beneficial to bring your closer in late in the game even with a tie. I will try to reference this as the statistical argument was quite compelling.