Hour 2: Mike Lupica

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Welcome back to the show, everybody. Hour 2 of our 2-hour radio program at 2.30. We take a chance. We don't take a chance. We talk to Mike Lupica every Wednesday at 2.30. So that's going to be fun to get his take on what's going on. Do or die game tonight, at least for the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. That'll be a full house. You know, they've got to get some offense. The only offense they've had so far, Rice and Wells. Combined 4 for 12, 2 home runs, 2 walks. Rest of the lineup is 1 for 46 with 2 RBIs, which is kind of startling. 1 for 46 But I thought that Joel Sherman brought up a great point as well. We look at the Tampa Bay Rays and say they've dominated the Yankees, but they really haven't. They were gifted all those runs in game 2 Gifted them. They are 1 for 18 with runners in scoring positions. So the Yankee pitching, which has been a big part of what they do, has lived up to its advanced billing.

It's the defense that betrayed them in game 2, and then 1 home run off the bat of Aranda, and a base running mistake by Wells, which even if he stopped at second, there's no guarantee that he would have been able to score. That's the person after him, whether it was McMahon or Stanton pinch hitting, would have gotten a hit to drive him in. But we know that it was a terrible base running maneuver, trying to go to third, making the third out at third base. But in game 1, on game 2, the error by McMahon, the error by Chisholm, those are things that can't happen. And that led in a run, and then another break down in some, you know, sloppy play in the 5th inning, and that's when the Rays broke it open. And one of the big plays was the, it was scored a throwing error by Lombard, but you could also make the case that Garcia should have made a better stretch and caught the ball. But that would have been the third out, and it would have been 3-1.

But instead, it kept the inning alive, and then Palacios gets a big two-run single, and it almost seemed insurmountable the way the Yankee offense or lack thereof had been operating. So it hasn't been that they've been overmatched. I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig here. Being down 0-2 is not good. The last time a team gained back from 0-2 was 2017 It's not easy to do.

The Padres are trying to do it. Let's see if they can. The Yankees are trying to do it. So the Padres gained three. They ended up winning. What will the Yankees do in game three? The Yankees have Max Fried on the mound against Nick Martinez. Now, Nick Martinez is a righty pitcher. Right-handed batters against Nick Martinez have a 704 OPS. Left-handed batters have a 660 OPS. Now you can say that's reverse splits. It's kind of neutral. So I guess you run the lineup that you want out there that you think is better defensively. If that means getting some right-handed hitters in there to change things up, you could do it because righty hitters actually have a higher OPS slightly than lefty hitters. But the Yankees for the first two games have thrown out eight left-handed batters. The only righty batter is Lombard. And Lombard had two of the best at bats against Rasmussen. Hit the ball really hard, but right at outfielders.

But I remember something that David Cohn, my colleague on the Yes Network, he said this when Don and I were together with Peter. He said, if I'm a right-handed pitcher, and there's a line up completely of left-handed batters, I love it. I don't have to change my look. I don't have to change my release. I feel very comfortable facing all the same side, whether it's righty or lefty. He said, it's the line ups that are staggered. Righty, lefty, righty, lefty, where you have to look differently where you're throwing the ball. It's just a different feel. And I guess the Yankees made it somewhat easy against the Rays in the first two games by sending out eight left-handed batters. Again, the only righty batter is Lombard.