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=== Gameflow ===

Felix threw great, real great, but not his Grade A game.  His pitches were half-a-baseball to a whole baseball flatter than they usually are, except the new cutter.

Funny, The King himself referred to his sinker flattening out on the Rauuuuul homer.  That was going to be our postgame, the fact that Felix had an odd lack of bite on his pitches tonight.  ::shrug::  That's life, mon ami.

.............

The New York Yankees have one signal attribute possessed by no other team in baseball.  They never get starry-eyed when going against celebrity baseball players like, say, Felix Hernandez.  Why's that?  I dunno, you tell me why Mick Jagger doesn't get jittery when he meets Mitt Romney.  Then you'll have an idea why Derek Jeter and his entourage don't sweat the Intimidators of the game.

Pedro Martinez used to have a puzzlingly hard time against the Yankees, who would coolly foul off his poisonous changeups and curve balls until he hit his 90 pitch count, and then they'd blast him.  A Seattle disk jockey asked a NYY radio guy why the Mariners got slaughtered, whereas the Yank$ found a way to deal with him.  The NYY guy explained blithely, "Everybody else buys into Pedro's so-called mystique.  The Yankees don't."

Not that Felix doesn't pitch well against the Yankees.  He does.  But you can visibly perceive the way the Yankees take the fight to Felix.  No other team does that.

They scraped and fought and wound up with 11 hits off the King.  Give it up for them.  Those guys don't make $20M apiece for nothin'.

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=== Hiroki Kuroda ===

Came into the game ranked the American League's #16 pitcher by Bill James' new system.  Meaning:  if you wanted to win one game TOMORROW, the guy at the top of the list would be Justin Verlander.  Jered Weaver would be next, and Felix after that .... down to #14, #15, Josh Beckett and Gavin Floyd.

Then Kuroda, and at #17 and #18 in the AL you'd have Santana, then Fister... Morrow, Derek Holland, Scherzer... a few places lower, our own Jason Vargas.

You get the point.  Kuroda's tough stuff.

This particular evening, he leaned on his slider a lot, including to get out of the bases-loaded jam.  But he threw a classic NPB game, with located fastballs and four different out pitches sprinkled around the strike zone.  

This NPB game is the future of baseball; intelligence will trump power in 21st century baseball.  Baseball is a game of precision; you might have noticed Felix' ERA since he lost the fastball.  Hiroshi Iwakuma is my kind of pitcher; so is Danny Hultzen.

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=== ARod ===

He looks like he can barely walk any more.  That "sprint" into a tag-out at home plate was paiiiinnnnnful to watch.  

He's going to have piggybacked exactly one ring, it looks like, and he's 36 with 634 homers.  Time was that I thought 800 was a given, and 900 a possibility.  Not sure now he's going to make 700, much less get the record.  

Karma catching up?  I hope so.  I'd rather see the Edgars of the game get the statues.

I don't wish ARod any pain, but ... it's a funny thing.  Looking back on it, I'm glad he wasn't a Mariner.  I'll miss Randy Johnson forever, do feel wistful about Junior's time being over, continue to miss Edgar, and am going to feel bad about Doug Fister for ten years.  Does anybody ever miss ARod?  At all?

He's rich, handsome and living exactly the life he wants.  In New York.  It's a win-win for me, gentlemen.

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