This is getting ridiculous. I think we all expected Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright to take their lumps against the Rangers’ young power bats, but to have the Yankee offense manage just five runs over two games against rookie Chris Young and notorious free agent disaster Chan Ho Park is difficult to take. Actually (and even worse), just two of those five runs came against the two Texas starters, the other three coming against the Ranger bullpen.
On Friday night the Yankees failed to score despite getting their leadoff hitter on base in the first, second, and sixth innings. In the fifth, Luis Sojo again windmilled Tony Womack home with two outs only to watch him get thrown out by several strides. In the eighth, the Yanks couldn’t get a runner home from second with one out. Save for a Hideki Matsui double in the fourth (which drove home Gary Sheffield who reached on a leadoff walk), the offense wasn’t able to break through until the ninth inning, when three pinch hitters–Rey Sanchez, Andy Phillips!, and Jorge Posada (John Flaherty got the start with Brown on the mound)–combined to produce two one-out runs (Sanchez singled, Phillips reached on an error after chopping the ball in front of the plate, and Jorge doubled them home). But by then it was too late, as Kevin Brown repeated the formula of his first start by allowing four runs in the first and another in the third before he and the bullpen (Stanton and Quantrill on this night) shut the Rangers down the rest of the way.
Yesterday, the Yankees again got the leadoff hitter on in the first inning (Derek Jeter’s on-base percentage is .471 and he’s on pace to walk a career high 144 times), but failed to bring him home. In five different innings the Yankees didn’t get a man on base until after the second out, scoring that man only once (in the third, a Bernie two-out double followed by a Sheffield RBI single). Alex Rodriguez reached third with two outs in the sixth, but was stranded when Posada struck out to end the inning.
Again, the Yankees finally broke through with pinch-hitters after the game was essentially out of hand. Down 10-1 in the eighth (six runs off Jaret Wright, two each off Steve Karsay and Felix Rodriguez), Torre began pulling his starters. Bubba Crosby singled for Sheffield, Matsui walked, Rodriguez moved them over via a groundout and Giambi got Crosby home via another. Almanzar then walked Posada and Buck Showalter brought in lefty Ron Mahay to pitch to Tino Martinez, prompting Torre to give Andy Phillips his second pinch-hit at-bat in as many games. With runners on the corners, Phillips blasted Mahay’s first pitch into the gap in left, but Kevin Mench was able to chase it down, nabbing the ball in the top of the webbing of his glove as he charged toward the warning track. The Yanks stranded another two-out baserunner in the ninth.
Of course the big story was the pitching.
