Weekend postmortem

Mike & Mike on ESPN are talking about the criticism of Willie Randolph for bringing Wagner into a non-Save situation. The Mike who isn't Mike Golic opined that it's absolutely ridiculous to blame the manager for his reliever's failure to preserve a four run lead, and it's even more stupid to do for the sole reason that even if he had preserved the lead, it wouldn't have qualified as a Save. He calls the Save rule "one of the dumbest stats in baseball."

Every once in a while, even elite Closers have really bad days. Do they hurt? Absolutely, and it's much worse because they're usually really highly paid and you always suspect that they've lost the Closer's Mentality. But the reason you get an elite Closer is because the meltdowns are so few and far between, and most nights it's 1-2-3 game over. In any case, I can't be convinced that the reason Wagner blew it is because he was so mentally thrown off by the score differential.

Let's just call Saturday's game "unlucky" and move on to Sunday's game, which was lucky. Really, really lucky.

The Yankees left 28 runners on base. The bags were juiced like... like something or someone that's juiced. I can't think of a topical analogy.

The Mets' combined pitching line: 9 IP, 12 H, 3 ER, 7 BB, 6 K. It makes me wonder if maybe this was an elaborately conceived tribute to fallen comrade Brian Bannister. If you change the order of the Yankees' offensive events (double, groundout, etc.) ever so slightly, we lose 6-4.

Our offense, on the other hand, scored four runs on seven hits. That's what power hitting, in the persons of Delgado and Wright, can do for a team.

In the last three innings, all three of Heilman, Sanchez, and Wagner looked a little bit shaky. But Wagner struck out two while throwing 15 of 21 pitches for strikes. I think there's hope for him yet.