GARY CAN’T BE WILD GUY
Sanchez is too sloppy behind plate for playoff
Suddenly a thorny problem that won’t go away is once again complicating matters for Joe Girardi, perhaps forcing him to choose between his heart and his head next week when it comes to his catcher.
Ultimately Gary Sanchez wasn’t the reason the Yankees blew a huge opportunity to draw within two games of the Red Sox on Thursday night. No, that was mostly the fault of Sonny Gray, who picked a bad time for a clunker as he took a pounding in a 9-6 loss to the Rays.
Nevertheless, as the Rays scored seven runs in the fifth inning, wiping out the Yankees’ 4-1 lead, two of them crossed the plate on pitches that got away from Sanchez. One was a wild pitch, a ball in the dirt that Sanchez blocked but couldn’t keep from bouncing far enough away to allow a run to score from third. The second one was more of a glaring mistake, a ball low but not in the dirt that Sanchez should have caught but scooted under his glove for a passed ball. Imagine if that happened on Tuesday in the wild-card game? Joe Girardi shouldn’t take that chance. Not when he can keep Sanchez’s bat in the lineup as the DH and have Austin Romine, a more skilled defensive catcher, behind the plate. I’m not saying Girardi shouldn’t catch Sanchez at all in the playoffs.
The manager has made a point of saying his catcher has worked hard to correct the defensive issues that Girardi called him out on earlier in the season.
I’m just saying that in a one-game wild-card scenario, Girardi can’t take the chance of blowing the season on a mistake as preventable as a passed ball.
It’s a flaw in Sanchez’s game that he can’t seem to correct, and whether it’s positioning or simply some lack of focus, it’s happened too often to assume he can prevent it when the stakes are at their highest.
In fact, Sanchez has 16 passed balls, the most in the majors.
Why does it continue to happen? Former major league catcher Dave Valle did a fascinating breakdown on MLB Network this week demonstrating that it’s more a result of bad positioning, with Sanchez often sitting too much on his heels, not allowing him to get his glove down early enough to block balls, and sometimes setting up on an angle that puts his left leg in the way.
In any case, Girardi said earlier this week that Sanchez is his catcher in the postseason, and then said “I feel good about his defense,” after Thursday night’s game, but that doesn’t mean he can’t change his mind in the best interest of the team.
If nothing else, you don’t want Luis Severino worrying that he can’t throw a slider in the dirt in a crucial situation, and who knows if that’s an issue at this point with the Yankee pitchers?
On this night, though the runs that scored on the wild pitch and passed ball were big at the time, cutting into the Yankees’ lead, they probably had little to do with the outcome.
Gray wasn’t sharp from the start, giving up a home run to the first hitter of the game, Corey Dickerson, and he was hit hard in the first couple of innings, but escaped more damage with the help of Brett Gardner throwing out a runner at the plate on a single to left to end the second inning.
Then it seemed Gray found his rhythm for a couple of innings, and the Stadium was rocking again, as the Yankees were once again playing Home Run Derby in their ballpark and having more fun with their TV-interview skits in the dugout.
By then the potential for some deliciously high drama was staring the Yankees right in the face, the outfield scoreboard telling them the Red Sox were losing big to the Astros.
Yes, you could practically hear Bostonians accusing their team of choking. And then Gray turned into Michael Pineda.
Ok, that’s harsh, and certainly Gray has made good overall so far on the trade that brought him from the A’s at the deadline, but, man, this was no time for a bad one.
By then, in fact, it seemed inevitable they were about to cut the Red Sox lead to two games in the AL East with three to play.
That still would have qualified as a long shot to catch the division leaders, except the Sox were losing at home for the third time in four nights, as their starting pitching suddenly has gone south on them.
And with the Astros still trying to overtake the Indians for best record in the American League, the games still matter Ato them as well. h, it would have made for great fun these next couple of days, and technically the Yankees still have a shot, three out with three to play. But the reality is they are headed for that wild-card game on Tuesday.
Thursday night offered a reminder that Girardi should play it smart and catch Romine.