=== Baseball IQ, Dept. ===

Watching the replay Saturday, you had the feeling that you were watching a Greg Maddux game.  An overwhelming sense of braininess saturated the room.  Just to take a f'r instance, let's consider the way that Felix butchered the Yankees in the 9th inning.  

... Keep in mind, now, Wedge was (wisely) breaking Craig Wright's Rule of 27:  the batters were getting their fourth looks at Felix here.  And two of them were LEFT hand hitters who were EXTREMELY capable of tying the score on one (small) mistake.  Cano has 29 homers and Granderson 24 so far this season; they had 28 and 41 last year.

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Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to retire Curtis Granderson leading off the 9th without allowing ANY possibility of a home run:

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Tom Glavine once said that the fundamental problem with throwing a curve, first pitch, is that it's not easy to throw it for a strike.  So look at the location of pitch one.  Pull it if you want, Curtis.

You notice Felix relying heavily on his dry spitball, you notice him locating it as though he's walking up to the mitt and placing it there, and you notice the vicious, in-breaking slider on pitch 4 that broke well in off the plate.

Jack Nicklaus once said that weekend golfers would take 10 strokes off their games if they would just emotionally accept that it's a game of precision, not power.  Felix is absolutely a precision pitcher.  There is no longer a macho pitching bone in his body.

If you walked in to 10th-grade math class, and saw somebody with Felix' face, would you expect him to be the A student in advanced placement?  Pitchers don't have to have baseball faces ....Felix, not to put too fine a point on it, doesn't particularly look super-smart.  The fact is, that he is super-smart.  I challenge anybody to explain in what way Greg Maddux or Jamie Moyer were smarter than Felix Hernandez.

Bonus light bulb:  notice Felix expanding the strike zone on pitches 1, 2, 3.  He has to get a piece on pitch one.  On 0-1, Granderson has to protect two inches extra.  On 0-2, Granderson can't take anything within four inches.  Now check out Felix' reaction to this situation.

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The Derek Jeter sequence, next.  Now keep in mind that Jeter is not a home run threat.  He's old, and he's right hand in Yankee.  He had six homers in 2011, and he has 8 this year - I think they were probably all in April.....

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Jeter loves, loves, loves to get an outside pitch and stroke it to right field for a pacy little single.  Felix was quite happy to show him two outside pitches.  BOOM!  And take this with you:  pacy little sliders that broke juuuuuuust outside Jeter's greedy waves.

On 0-2, here came a challenge pitch letter-high, 94 MPH.  It's a tribute to Jeter that he was able to tick it back.

1-2, two pitches later, another high one.  An insulting sequence.  Jeter skied it for an out.  The point is, Felix goes at his enemies' weaknesses like a Rottweiler defending a pork chop.

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Two out.  Robinson Cano up.  Would you like to take a guess, amigo, as to Cano's SLG against right hand pitchers in 2012?  Check this out!  Think Edgar ever did that?  Junior?

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Cracked off an overhand yakker against an over-aggressive man who was twitchy to put a home run swing on the ball.  The Eckersley Rule:  if the batter's twitchy, pull the string.  If the batter's confused, pound him with heat.

Pitch two expands the zone -- and exploits the "unhittable" dry spitter.  To the HR threats Granderson and Cano, Felix threw 8 pitches -- 0 of them fastballs.  Would you like to guess whether Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia or Roy Halladay can pitch like that?

Pitch three.  Did you see it?  It was Brendan Fraser in The Scout -- Felix, winding up, grinned, and cracked off a slider that Cano missed by a mile.

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=== Credit Where Credit's Due, Dept. ===

Trade deadline just went by.  Felix says he's going to retire a Mariner.  After this particular game, Felix raved about ... John Jaso.  "Shook him off about four times all night."  Think you can take it from there?