My Kingdom for Some Middle Relief!

What's been killing the Yanks in the last 2 games has been the late-season mediocrity of Felix Heredia and Paul Quantrill. If Torre trusted his middle relievers to get outs in big situations, those guys would be coming in in the seventh, instead of Tom Gordon. But because those guys were so lousy down the stretch (Quantrill because of injury and overuse, Heredia because he's just no good) Torre has to try to get 3-4 innings at the end of the game out of his tired set-up man and closer. The result is that we're still seeing Heredia and Quantrill, just in the 10th, 11th and 12th innings instead of the 6th and 7th.

(That said, I actually thought Heredia pitched pretty well tonight. I liked his strikeout of Ortiz, although the truth is that Ortiz didn't in fact go around on strike three. But them's the breaks, and even Felix gets them sometimes.)