A Torre Loss

That's a Torre loss if I've ever seen one. Put up another sheep next to Joe's picture NoMaas. Here's why:

1. Top 10, Thompson leading off. The young guy gets a single to spark our rally. This is not a bottom of the 9th walk off situation. Abreu bunts. First, WHY??!! Abreu's career batting line is .300/.410/.500 and that kind of player shouldn't bunt. EVER. Those numbers tell you that he will get himself on base 41% of the time, which is better than all but the top 2-3% of players in the sport. His .500 slugging means that there's a very good chance he will hit an extra base hit, which would easily score the speedy Thompson. Second, he failed to get down a good bunt the first time. Everyone in the park knew it was coming. You saw him fail once, and Thompson is inexperienced at 1st. You actually drew a temporary reprieve for your insanity, but it all when awry and you ended up giving away an out. You may as well have had him stand there with the bat on his shoulders and take 3 strikes. Matsui's strikeout with one out and the bases loaded was a devastating failure, but it all started with Abreu and Torre.

2. Scott Proctor batting??!! Why did you call up Basak if you're not going to use him. I know you're trying to squeeze more work out of Proctor, but he'd already thrown two innings and a bunch of pitches. Accept the fact that he'd done his job and move on. The Yankees are not in a position anymore to piss away at bats in extra innings games. We're headed backwards now, not forwards. Losing ground in both the division and wild card after we stormed back is just a waste.

3. Scott Proctor pitching to a left handed batter with Mariano Rivera available. You'd managed 39 pitches and 2.2 innings of work out of Proctor. Runners on 1st and 3rd with two outs is a chance to escape after Proctor very nearly gave away the game to the previous batter on an infield single by Omar Vizquel. 39 pitches is a lot of pitches, and Proctor was very wild to Vizquel one batter earlier. Why chance it? You'd battled that far and Mariano is just the guy to come in and throw the cutter to the lefty. What happened? Proctor gives up the walk off single on the first pitch. Senseless.

By no means is this a "Fire Joe Torre" post, but he lost this game for us with a little help from Hideki Matsui and Kevin Thompson in the 10th. We're falling farther and farther back in the wild card, and the division can just be kissed goodbye at this point. Can we count on another hot streak like our recent run? I think it's possible, but we just crapped ourselves on this West Coast swing, and it will be very tough to make up for it now.