Wow

Yankees 2, A's 0

The best start of Wang's career. Eight shutout innings. 85 pitches. 20, count 'em, 20, ground ball outs. I felt, especially after Bernie's home run in the bottom of the 8th to make it 2-0, supremely confident that Wang could finish this game. Wow.

But of course he wouldn't.

I knew that Joe was going to being Mariano in to pitch the 9th. And he had not, and something terrible happened, the second-guessing would've been deafening. So, Mariano comes in, and with a little trouble, gets the save. All's right with the world. Err, or maybe not.

1. There seem to be a lot more baserunners agasint Mariano this year than in years past. Is this a slow start, or the very beginning of the inevitable dropoff? Mariano is 36, which isn't necessarily old, but he's been a top closer for a very long time, a lot longer than most stay at that level.

2. Further, at this point, left-handed hitters are batting .303 against him. That's a potenitally very troubling thing, becasue it might mean that his out pitch, that cut fastball that renders lefties typcially helpless, is not as sharp as it once was.

3. Mariano's a victim of Joe's managing and circumstance also. Panic Joe using him on Wednesday night when he didn't really have to resulted in last night being the third night in a row and rendering him unavailble today. (He needs to be unavailable today, regardless of whether he says he can pitch or not.) This is the problem with the "give the closer some work when you wouldn't normally use him" theory. You never know. Statistically, all teams get roughly the same number of save opportunites, so as a rule managers are better off not trying to guess.

But, two sides to every coin. And it's entirely possible that the feel of the cutter isn't quite there yet, so Mariano's throwing more fastballs for now. At 36, perhaps he starts a little slower than he did at a younger age. He's pitching a lot better in May than he did in April. The save opportunities haven't been there so far in big bunches and I'm sure that choppiness isnt overall a good thing for his pitching. It's entirely possible that the Mariano will pitch well as long as he feels like it.

So in the end it's way too early to panic about Mariano. I dearly would love to have seen Wang go for the complete game shutout last night, though.