On a rainy and chilly night at the new Yankees stadium, A-Rod continued his post-season heroics. What a difference a month makes. A-Rod went from being a choker to Mr.October in a matter of a couple of weeks. Rodriguez hit a tying homer in the 11-Th inning and the Yankees won the game in the 13-Th on a Maicer Izturis error. Angels are making a lot of errors these days. They better start catching the ball when they get back to Anaheim. They are playing a team thats loaded top to bottom and you can't give them many chances. Yankees are so loaded that even A-Rod doesn't seem to feel the pressure of carrying the World on his shoulders anymore and that may be the reason for his success. Mark Teixeira has been a God-send for A-Rod and every time they walked Tex to get to A-Rod during the regular season, I think A-Rod relaxed a little bit more. He was not expected to be the man anymore and he liked it that way.
But the truth is, there is no real basis for the "clutch player" and the "choke artist" tags. I understand sports, and even life for that matter, is mostly mental and guys handle pressure and the stress in different ways. But the bottom-line is, if you are good, you are good and if you are bad, you are bad. And A-Rod is very good. So it was just a matter of time before he came through in the playoffs. This is also why I think Derek Jeter is good, but over-rated. He plays for the Yankees and plays 10+ playoff game almost every year. Of course his post-season stats are going to be on-par with his career stats with such a large sample size. Most guys in other teams can't get to play in these many playoff games and their sample size is very small. So the stats are going to be hit or miss, but mostly miss because the playoffs also brings you good pitchers and great competition. Chances are, you are not going to have great stats if you just play 5 or 6 playoff games in your career. But if you play 100 games or so, things even out. So A-Rod's numbers will only get better as he plays longer for the Yankees and gets more and more post-season opportunities.
A-Rod and C.C.Sabathia are carrying the Yankees in these playoffs and A.J. Burnett was not too shabby today either. The Angels needs a masterful pitching performance in a game or two if they want to turn this thing around against A-Rod and this offense. May be Jared Weaver in game 3 can be that guy. Actually Teixeira is hitting just .100 and both him and A-Rod combined for a 1/11 night today. But that 1 hit was A-Rod's homer. If Tex gets going as well, the Angels will be in trouble. They lost a golden opportunity today and they can't afford to do this again and lose game 3. The Dodgers and Phillies play game 3 tomorrow. It's Cliff Lee against Hiroki Kuroda and you have to think the Phillies are the favorites. But thats why they play the game and lets see what happens. This might be a good time for Manny to come out of his .111 funk.
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