Daily Archives: June 1, 2005

The Yankees haven’t lost on my man Alex’s birthday since 2001, but they did so last night against the pathetic Kansas City Royals, dropping the game 3-1 and in turn giving the Royals just their fourth series win on the season (the others coming against the Angels, Indians, D-Rays).

Randy Johnson again failed to dominate, allowing 9 hits including a two-run first-inning home run on a flat slider to Emil Brown. Overall, it was Johnson’s best start in his last four tries, as he went the distance, striking out seven against just one walk, needing just 104 pitches to get through eight, 68 percent of which were strikes. But one must remember that he was facing this line-up:

Angel Berroa
David DeJesus
Mike Sweeney
Emil Brown
Tony Graffanino
Matt Diaz
John Buck
Terrence Long
Joe McEwing

Facing those nine, Johnson allowed three runs in his first three innings, which would prove to be all the Royals needed.

The Yankee bats were pathetic, announcing the official arrival of a team-wide slump that has seen them score just seven runs in their last four games. Their only real threat against D.J. Carrasco, who picked up his first win as a major league starter, came in the first.

Leading off the game, Jeter worked Carrasco for seven pitches before flying out. Matsui, batting in the two-spot with Tony Womack on the bench, then singled on Carrasco’s 15th pitch and Sheffield walked on the next four. With two on and just one out, Carrasco then got two called strikes on Alex Rodriguez before getting him to fly out to right and Jorge Posada followed with a two-pitch groundout to first.

Brown touched off on Johnson in the bottom of the inning (and I do mean “touched off,” his shot was a no-doubter that splashed down in the fountain in left) two outs after a perfectly placed lead-off bloop double just inside the foul line in shallow right by Angel Berroa. That was about all she wrote.

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Despite the Yankees’ current three-game losing streak (against the rival Red Sox and rotten Royals, no less), I’m not particularly alarmed about how this team is playing. Win ten in a row here, lose three in a row there, that’s more than acceptable. That said, there is no excuse for this team not to take the remaining two games of this series in Kansas City.

Joe Torre will be back in the dugout tonight, having served his one-day suspension resulting from the Quantrill-Tigers incident yesterday. Quantrill himself remains suspended for the duration of this series, which shouldn’t matter much as he could use a break after his disastrous appearance on Sunday and Tanyon Sturtze, who worked one scoreless inning last night, is the only Yankee reliever to have pitched since then.

Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui got the park early yesterday to work on defense and hitting respectively. Matsui, whose drills focused on hitting off of a tee, responded immediately last night with his first homer since the Cretaceous Period (a.k.a. April 8). Rodriguez’s results will reveal themselves over a longer period, but he did look good in the field last night.

The Royals are skipping the atrocious Jose Lima (8.13 ERA, 15 homers in 11 starts) tonight in favor of D.J. Carrasco, who has two quality starts in three attempts this season (the exception coming against the Orioles), but just five strikeouts in 17 2/3 innings (he’s a contact/groundball type). Randy Johnson, who will take the hill for the Yanks, really needs to have a dominant outing having allowed 28 hits and struck out just 8 (against five walks) in his last three starts combined (18 2/3 IP), and there’s no better team to do that against than the 2005 Kansas City Royals.

As always . . .

Derek Jeter was robbed on the first play of the game last night, which set the tone for the evening as the the Bombers fell to the lowly Royals, 5-3 in Kansas City. Robinson Cano made a key error, Tony Womack got himself picked off of first to thwart a rally in the seventh, and the Yankees managed only five hits all night (including two doubles by Bernie Williams and a dinger–yes a long ball–by Godziller Matsui). They chased “Baby-faced Finster” Grenike early enough but then didn’t do anything against the Royals’ bullpen. Oy veh. It was one of those games. The kind where I find myself getting way too emotional about things I’ve got absolutely no control over, grinding my teeth, mumbling to myself. So, without getting irrational about it, let’s just say that it was a discouraging performance by the Yanks.

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