Daily Archives: August 29, 2005

Mike Mussina avoided his fifth inning struggles last night by getting himself pulled from the game in the fourth, but Aaron Small pitched four innings of one-hit ball in relief and Jason Giambi hit another pair of homers to give the Yankees a lead and, eventually, a win to open their series against the Mariners.

After the game, Mussina said that in the fifth inning of his last start and throughout this game he was having trouble throwing strikes and hinted that he’s going through a dead-arm period. Indeed, Mussina had nothing last night, as was clear from his first two pitches to Ichiro Suzuki. The first was a ball. The second landed in the right-field seats for a lead-off home run. Moose then went full on Willie Bloomquist before getting him to ground out. Raul Ibanez followed by creaming a pitch to deep right center, but got himself thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple (Bernie to Cano to Rodriguez). Richie Sexson followed by scorching a ball into Cano’s glove for the third out.

All Moose yielded in the second was a one-out Greg Dobbs double, making it his best inning of the night. In the third, a pair of singles by Miguel Ojeda and Ichiro! were followed by a Bloomquist sac bunt and four-pitch walks to Ibanez and Sexson, the latter forcing in the Mariners’ second run. Moose then threw ball one to both of the next two batters but got Adrian Beltre to pop out on a fastball down the middle and Dobbs to fly out to deep left.

Then came the fourth, which Moose started with a five-pitch walk to Yuniesky Betancourt. Mussina then fell behind 3-0 on Jeremy Reed, who, after a called strike, caught Alex Rodriguez off guard with a bunt to third that Rodriguez was unable to pick out of the grass. Moose then walked Ojeda after getting ahead of him 1-2, the final pitch being a breaking ball that was nowhere near the strike zone. That was all Joe Torre had to see, as he wisely pulled Mussina before he could do any further damage.

Brought into an ugly bases-loaded, no-outs situation, Aaron Small induced a pair of double play balls to second from Suzuki and Bloomquist, but Ichiro was able to beat out the first and first base ump Tim Tschida blew the call on Bloomquist, so Small only got two outs to show for it as the Mariners increased their lead to 4-0. Small then walked Ibanez, but got Sexson to fly out for the final out of the inning.

As all of this was going on, the Yankees were scuffling against Ryan Franklin. The second was the only inning among the first four in which the Yankees got a runner on base, as Alex Rodriguez lead off with an infield single and was followed by a Giambi walk. They then promptly ran themselves into a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play with Bernie Williams swinging through a pitch and Alex Rodriguez getting thrown out by several feet at third on a failed hit and run.

After Small came in to clean-up Mussina’s mess, however, things turned around. Jason Giambi led off the fifth with a mammoth homer off the restaurant in right field (just below the neon “Hit It Here” target). Then, after the Yankees ran into another double play via the hit and run (this time with Bernie on the bases and Lawton at the plate), Posada doubled, moved to third on a wild pitch, and was singled home by Cano to cut the Mariner lead in half.

In the sixth, after a first-pitch Matsui groundout, Sheffield and Rodriguez walked (the former on four pitches), driving Franklin from the game at 93 pitches. Mike Hargrove then called on lefty Matt Thornton, who went to 1-1 on Giambi before Jason crushed yet another home run, his fourth in the last two games, this one a three-run job that gave the Yankees a lead they would not relinquish.

Small cruised through the fifth, sixth and seventh, scattering a Greg Dobbs double and two more walks, and in the top of the eighth Alex Rodriguez and Matt Lawton added solo homers to cushion the Yankee lead. Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera finished it off with perfect eighth and ninth innings.

In my opinion, the story of the game was Aaron Small, who picked up the win and is now 5-0 with a 3.03 ERA as a Yankee, but the story of the past two games has clearly been Jason Giambi. Giambi now has four homers and eleven RBIs over his last two games after hitting just two taters and driving in just seven runs in the previous twenty-five games in August.

According to Giambi, the difference in the past two games has been a cortisone injection he got last week to relieve the pain from tendonitis in his left elbow, which makes more sense than pointing to the fact that the acquisition of Matt Lawton has pushed him back into the field (though I suspect the latter hasn’t hurt his focus at the plate as the association between Giambi’s success at the plate and playing time at first base is downright eerie).

Giambi’s comeback this season continues to astound as he has set personal bests for homers in a single month (14 in July) and multi-homer games (now seven). The latter total accounts for more than 23 percent of his career multi-homer games (now 30), which is stunning considering the fact that Giambi had 281 career homers entering this season and was the best hitter in the American League, if not the majors, for several seasons around the turn of the millennium.

Ten days ago, I wrote that the Yankees were in good shape because they had more games left to play against the teams leading them in the AL East and Wild Card races than they were games behind those teams. At that time the Yanks were four games behind the Red Sox with six left to play against them and a game and a half behind the A’s for the Wild Card with three left to play against them.

Since then the Yankees have gone 8-2 while the Red Sox have gone 5-4 and the A’s 6-3. As a result, the Yankees have eliminated their Wild Card deficit and carved 2.5 games out of their AL East deficit and still have all nine games left to play against these two rivals.

Meanwhile, two other contenders have entered the Wild Card picture from different directions. Thanks in part to a weekend sweep at the hands of the Devil Rays, the Angels have gone 3-6 over this stretch, yielding the AL West lead to the A’s and, in turn, the Wild Card lead to the Yankees, who lead the now second-place Angels by a half game. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Indians have been bouncing in and out of a Wild Card tie with the Yankees, matching them at 8-2 over the past ten days, and currently standing one game behind them, as they were on August 19.

For their part, the Yankees have been doing exactly what they’ve needed to, taking two of three from the slumping White Sox to finish the punishingly difficult portion of their schedule with a 24-16 (.600) record, then going 6-1 against the Blue Jays and Royals at home.

Tonight the Yankees start a four game series against the Mariners in Seattle, and it would behoove them to win at least three of these games as well, as things will be far more difficult over the twelve games that follow.

After the Yankees leave Seattle, they play those three games against the A’s in Oakland. The following weekend they will play three games at home against the Red Sox. And on either side of that Red Sox series they will play a pair of three-game series against the Devil Rays. Remember, the Devil Rays just swept the Angels and are 9-4 against the Yankees this season. The D-Rays are also 27-15 since the All-Star break, a record a half-game better than the Yankees’ 27-16 and a game and a half better than the Red Sox’s 25-16 over the same period (the A’s are 29-13 since the break).

All the more reason to take advantage of the Mariners (who, for comparison’s sake, are 16-26 since the All-Star break, 9-15 in August and 3-7 over their last three series). Tonight, Mike Mussina looks to conquer his fifth-inning struggles against Ryan Franklin, who pitched somewhere between very well (quality start) and excellent (shutout) in four of his five July starts, but has given up 19 runs in 15 1/3 innings across three poor starts this month.

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Derek Jeter’s fielding improved last year, so much so that he was awarded the Gold Glove for American League shortstops. Now, he may not have been the best defensive shortstop in the league, but he had one of his best seasons with the leather. According to Steve Lombardi, Jeter’s fielding has remained at the top of the league again this year:

Is he a terrible SS? No. A terrible SS would have been moved off SS by now. Tony Batista was moved. Chipper Jones was moved. Mike Lansing was moved. Mark Lewis was moved. Jose Offerman was moved. Wil Cordero was moved. Julio Franco was moved. In the big leagues, if you truly are a terrible SS, you will eventually be moved. Even a stupid team figures it out after a while. Jeter has not been moved, because he is not terrible with the glove at SS.

While Jeter’s power numbers have dipped (he hit 23 homers and 44 doubles in 2004, and he has 14,and 21 respectively so far this year), Jeter has walked 60 times so far in 2005, up from 46 all of last year. He has six sacrifices this year, down from a ridiculously high 16 in 2004 (that spike was a direct result of Jeter’s early season slump, and it was a habit he did not break out of all year, even after he starting hitting). Jeter scored his 100th run of the season yesterday and his line of .315/.393/.456 makes for another impressive year, don’t you think?

Jason Giambi led the Yankees to a 10-3 thrasing over the Royals on a muggy summer day in the Bronx. Giambi went 3-3 with a walk, hit two home runs and collected seven RBI. Al Leiter was, well, Al Lieter, and he pitched well enough to earn the win.

In all, it was a good home stand for the Bombers. The Red Sox and the Devil Rays (Cantu, Gomes and company) completed a three-game sweep of the Angels. The A’s are now in first place in the AL West. The Yanks lead the wildcard by a half-a-game over the Angels and a complete game over the Indians. They trail Boston by a game-and-a-half. The Red Sox now have to deal with the streaking Devil Rays while the Yanks are off to the west coast this week. They’ve got four in Seattle, including a scintillating Wednesday night match-up featuring Randy Johnson and the young Felix Hernandez, which could be dubbed “The Once and Future King.” Then on Friday, they are off to Oakland for three against the A’s. Looks like Leiter, Mussina and Chacon will pitch in Oakland. It’s another important week for the Bombers as we move to September. The Yanks then return to face Tampa Bay and then Boston. Crunch time.