Chien-Ming Wang probably just pitched the best game of his young Yankee Career. A 2-hitter gem, that was one for the ages. He may have just solidified himself as the most under-rated pitcher in baseball. His style of pitching does not get the attention that a Clemens, or Randy Johnson gets, he pitches to contact. This allows his teammates in the field to do their job; field, catch, and throw. His style is very repetitive. It has a tendency to lull you to sleep.
How many times do you hear… “grounder in the infield, (place name here) picks it up, tosses it to Giambi at first for the out.”? If you listen to the game on the radio (the way it was meant to be, by the way) you may fall asleep, very boring. But he gets the job done.
There was one difference from today versus a normal Wang outing. There was actually 14 fly-outs. ooh! Now that is baseball. The ball went into the air. At least the infield got a break on those outs. But, honestly, it is the intangibles that make him so incredible. Look at some of these numbers that you don’t hear about everyday:
- Pitches-Strikes (93-61)– that ball/strike ratio is important to his ground ball out numbers. The hitters are forced to try to make some form of contact with a lot of pitches from Wang that they normally would have let go, knowing it most likely will be called a ball. Not with Wang. He flirts with throwing perfectly. I mean he just takes the mound, and plays with the strike zone, finding the absolute limits for his pitches to be called strikes. Once that is figured out, he then starts manipulating speeds, pitches, looks, deliveries. It really is impressive. If you like a good pitching game, then he is your man. You would be able to appreciate what is really happening out there. What he is doing is something of magic. Let alone the fact that this took place in Fenway Park, against possibly the biggest rival in professional sports. I’m just saying. He is incredible!
- Batters faced: 29– This is what I am referring to. 27 is a perfect game. So that makes this an incredible pitching performance!
- Ground-out/Fly-out (10-14)– As we can all see here, 24 of the 29 batters were out by making some kind of contact, pop-up or grounder, which is how he pitches, meaning he controlled the game today. He was pitching his game.
Those are some of the numbers that get looked past when some of us consider a god/bad pitching outing. Regardless, this was something that should be remembered as one of his best. Considering the environment, and the opponent.
Well, with that off my chest, the offense came from 10 hits, spread out pretty good among the lineup. Rodriguez, Matsui, and Molina each had two hits. The 4 runs came off the bats of Molina, Giambi, Cabrera, and Abreu. One run in the 5th and 9th innings, and two runs in the 7th inning.
4-1 was your final score today, and theeeeeeeeeeee Yankees Win!
