Let me first start off by saying WOOOOOOOOO!!!! For those of you who don’t know, I’m a 2009 graduate of UConn and haven’t stopped smiling yet. As happy as I am that the Huskies took home the title last night, I’m glad the season is over. Why? Because that means one thing: in the world of Matt Imbrogno, the rest of the year is baseball, baseball, baseball. I’m sorry NBA fans; I’m sorry NHL fans…baseball is all that matters from now until October.
On to the game from last night. Like the first game of the season, things went as planned in terms of pitching for the Yankees. The starter went six innings, Joba Chamberlain did his thing in the seventh, Rafael Soriano did his thing in the eighth, and, of course, Mariano Rivera did his thing in the ninth. Ivan Nova may’ve made it a little interesting, what with his iffy handling of the Twins lineup after the first time around. Still, I’ll take three runs in six innings from him every time. But this is about the bullpen, and specifically, Rafael Soriano. Larry offered the Tweet that inspired this post:
I know many of us hated on the Soriano signing, but now that the season’s actually started it’s pretty damn amazing having him for the 8th
Watching Soriano work has definitely been a treat in the first few games of the season. There are obviously going to be times when he blows up and we’ll throw fits about that ridiculous contract, but as long as he’s getting outs, we’ll keep acknowledging what we did when the signing went down: This contract is not favorable in any way, but we can’t deny in any meaningful way that the addition of Rafael Soriano makes the 2011 team better.
As Yankee fans, we’re used to our fair of bad contracts for players who are either good or were good at one point and we can’t help but acknowledge that when said player performs. While he’s performing well, that contract is definitely the farthest thing from our minds. As long as Soriano keeps throwing like he did last night, I won’t be thinking about that contract until the season is over.
This is definitely about differentiating. It’s about separating emotion and logic. Usually, I’m beating the “Logic Over Emotion” drum, but this time, I’m more than okay with allowing the emotion to take over. If we rack our brains and wring our hands about Soriano’s contract every time he toes the rubber, we’re going to go absolutely nuts. Let’s remember that he’s here to help he Yankees win baseball games and chances are, he’s going to keep doing that.
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8 Responses to “Tolerating” Soriano
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TIQ IQ
I’m inclined to agree with you Matt, everything about the deal made me angry (the money, the years, the loss of a draft pick), but what’s done is done and so long as he’s productive and helps solidify the back end of the bullpen I could think of worse ways to spend that money.
Shoudl you really ask people to look at your twitter if isn’t set to public? All the writers here should be public.
I’m sure Matt will accept you if you make a request. He has valid reasons for keeping it private.
Hell yeah, Matt. U-C-O-N-N
What a ridiculous season. Only way it could be better would be if the women had managed to uphold their end of the deal.
“Soriano is good and therefore the contract is worth it” and “The contract isn’t worth it and therefore Soriano isn’t any good” are both silly. We’ll all get a charge out of Soriano’s pitching during the season, and we’ll all freak out over the contract after the season. The one doesn’t have much to do with the other.
Agreed. This is exactly how I feel.
Go UConn!!
Oh yeah, and I totally agree on the point about Soriano.
Some of us liked signing him at the time it happened (tho’ the contract is just plain silly). The owners can’t complain about the added payroll since they’re the ones that signed him, and we get an excellent RP for at least one year.