Last night’s Yanks-Twins contest was suspended heading to the top of the sixth and is scheduled to resume today, Wednesday at 5:05. The previously scheduled Wednesday game is to start at either 7:10 or 1/2 hour following the conclusion of the suspended game. For the regularly scheduled contest, Andy Pettitte will be pitching for New York and Francisco Liriano will be taking the mound for Minnesota. Depending on how things go in the first game, the Yanks will have a pitcher on standby who will be ready to go if they decide to make a roster move for the 2nd game, with Jon Albaladejo as the likely candidate. AJ Burnett can still qualify for a win, should the Yanks score in the top of the 6th.
All of this just strikes me as odd. Picking up a game mid stream is something I have trouble getting my arms around. For his part, manager Joe Girardi likes the rules change that allows teams to pick up tie games. He said this last night:
“I really like what baseball has done, where you don’t start over,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “It’s not the end of the world. We’ll start in the sixth inning.”
I’m not so sure. This is just the second time the Yanks have ever done this since the bizarre ‘Pine Tar Game’ of July 24th, 1983, with the other contest being a 1.5 inning affair in 2007 that the Great Mariano seemed to have a lot of trouble getting up for (h/t Larry Koestler). Picking up a game mid stream is one of the more bizarre things you’ll ever see as a Baseball fan. A reliever will start/resume the game, in the Yanks case it will probably be one of their Lefties since three of the first four Twins batters will be left handed. But the usual cadence of a Baseball game seems completely interrupted, and it takes me a few innings to get settled in. I understand why managers like it, it’s less work for their team during an otherwise long season. I don’t like that the stats count, because rain shortened games are usually played under such poor conditions for the most/all of the game that the rain-soaked numbers seem compromised to me.
What do you think? Do you like this rule that allows rain-shorted games to be resumed at the time of the delay, or does it feel weird to you?
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4 Responses to Let's play . . . 1 1/3?
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TIQ IQ
Steve,
In 2007 the Yanks and O’s played a game suspended in the 8th that was resumed a month later.
Thanks Larry, I’m going to add an edit to the post.
You’re welcome, and thanks!
I think it’s better than having to start the whole game over.I was at the game and would be pretty mad about not being able to see the rest of it (as I do not have tickets for tonight), except that squirrel was amazing.