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They fall behind the Yankees, but always come back.
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Only to lose again at the very end.
This loss was very tough to swallow. We had a 1 run lead (should have been more than that - why didn't Lugo slide? Why did Abreu of all people have to make that uncharacteristically good catch?) going into the 8th inning with our best two relief pitchers coming into the game. We were one strike away from going into the bottom of the 9th with a tie. Ortiz's bid for a tying homerun came up just shy and probably would have cleared the fence on a warmer night. Now instead of being 14 1/2 up in the standings, with the Yankees demoralized, we're merely 12 1/2 up on them with the Yankees energized.
I know 12 1/2 is still a large lead but there's a lot of baseball left to be played and I don't like how the Yankees are able to beat our best pitchers now. We're 2-4 in our last 6 games against New York, both wins coming against Mike Mussina, who seems to be the only guy we can beat now. We had Andy Pettitte on the ropes early, we should have been able to batter their bullpen. I'm quite dissappointed in our performance this weekend. We're not playing like a World Series-caliber team. And it's probably not going to get any better tonight when we face off against the league's best pitcher in Oakland, while we counter with our worst.
This is one of those games that's going to stick with me for awhile.