Yanks Drop Opening Night Game As Bullpen Fails

Opening night at Fenway Park started out a success, but ended in complete failure. The Yankees jumped out to an early 5-1 lead, with help from back-to-back home runs by Jorge Posada and new Yankee Curtis Granderson and a double steal with Brett Gardner stealing home.

C.C. Sabathia started off strong as Josh Beckett faltered early, but the Red Sox came back on Sabathia and it seemed as if manager Joe Girardi left Sabathia in for a batter or two too many in the sixth inning as the Red Sox put men on base and eventually tied the game at five.

The game that was sure to be a marquee match up with two of the top three pitchers in wins over the last five years (Sabathia with the most, Beckett with the third most), proved to be an slugfest. The Red Sox ended up out-slugging the Yankees, thanks to a home run by Dustin Pedroia, and won the game 9-7.

But my two biggest issues with last night's loss was how bad Jorge Posada was behind the plate and how atrocious the Yankees bullpen was.

Everyone that knows my passion for the Yankees also knows how much I hate Jorge Posada behind the plate because of his ineptness in several aspects of the game back there.

Take it from a fellow catcher that knows more about catching than many people at the age of 18. I have been catching since I was nine and nine years later, I could probably play better defense than Jorgie could.

Ever since he broke his left leg and severely dislocated his left ankle while playing for the Yankees old Triple-A affiliate, the Columbus Clippers, in 1994 in a collision at home plate, Posada has been afraid to block the plate on plays at the plate.

He is not very successful at throwing out would be base stealers and it has only gotten worse since he had surgery to repair the labrum and rotator cuff in his throwing arm in July 2008. That is evident by his absolutely horrendous "pop-times" (times from home plate to second base on a stolen base attempt) so far this year, which have been 3.5 and 3.8 seconds on two occasions. That is more than unacceptable, its unfathomable. You could never even make a high school baseball team throwing the ball down to second base with those times, let alone a professional team. Maybe it's time the Yankees looked into alternatives for the catching position.

He does not block balls in the dirt particularly well either.

Take the "bug game" from the 2007 ALDS against the Cleveland Indians. No one realizes that even though those bugs might have hindered Joba's performance, but the reason the Yankees lost that game was because Posada failed to block the ball, enabling Grady Sizemore to score the winning run. He got lazy and tried to back hand the ball and it cost them the game and the series.

Take last night's game, where he failed to block a couple of pitches in the dirt that enabled runners to score. He also flat out missed catching a fastball from Joba Chamberlain that enabled Kevin Youkilis to score the winning run in the seventh inning.

That seems to happen a lot and it seems to be because he has a hard time communicating with his pitchers. He does not call a game particularly well and it showed last night as there was miscommunication on the pitch that resulted in Dustin Pedroia's two-run home run.

Marte seemed unhappy with Posada about the pitch selection and that was the case all of last year with A.J. Burnett, resulting in Burnett having Jose Molina be his personal catcher throughout the playoffs.

The Yankees will be THAT much better when Posada is no longer catching on a regular basis.

Now onto that awful Yankees bullpen from last night, uncharacteristic of last year's championship team.

David Robertson came on after Sabathia got into trouble in the sixth inning and gave up a hit that scored a run to tie the game at five.

Chan Ho Park came on and started off strong but then folded as he gave up a two-run homer to Pedroia that tied the game at seven. Park gave up three runs in two-thirds of an inning.

Marte walked his only man and threw a wild pitch, even though as previously stated, it was Posada's fault and Chamberlain came on and was even worse, giving up two hits, one run and walking one in an inning and a third.

This bullpen needs to play well for them to be successful this year, obviously, but they need to be as dominant as they were last year.

I realize it was only one game, but last night better not be a sign of things to come.