While the Yanks remain in first place, the one-game lead they had on the Red Sox disappeared yesterday as Jaret Wright and B.J. Ryan each suffered a meltdown that would be directly responsible for handing their teams a loss. Wright’s was almost tragicomic.
In his previous start, also against the Blue Jays, Wright was forced to leave the game with one out in the third when a broken bat lacerated his pitching elbow. Less than three weeks before that, he had a start shortened when a comebacker ricocheted off his collarbone. This after spending more than three months on the disabled list with a reoccurrence of the shoulder problems that have plagued him throughout his career. Yesterday, Wright was again hit by a comebacker, this time in the chest. This time, however, the projectile did not prompt his removal from the game, though in retrospect, it might have benefited the Yankees if it had.
Wright surrendered singles to the first four batters he faced yesterday, putting him down 1-0 with the bases loaded and no one out by the time he had thrown a dozen pitches. Two pitches later, Erik Hinske hit what looked to be a sac fly toward the foul line in left field, which would have made the game 2-0 with one out and men on first and second. But Hideki Matsui, perhaps bewildered by the mid-afternoon sun, closed his glove before he had the ball, effectively swatting it toward foul territory, allowing two runs to score and putting runners at second and third, still with no outs. Two pitches later, Gregg Zaun hit a shot off Wright’s chest for a 1-3 groundout. Wright then surrendered a sac fly to Reed Johnson that made it 4-0 and struck out Gabe Gross to get out of the inning.
The Yankees got right back in it in the bottom of the first when Derek Jeter was hit in the back foot with a Scott Downs curve ball and Alex Rodriguez cashed both the Captain and himself in with a two-run dinger into the Yankee bullpen (tying Joe DiMaggio’s record of 46 home runs for a right-handed Yankee batter in the process). Unfortunately, Wright couldn’t get it together, allowing two more singles to start the second then walking Frank Catalanotto to load the bases. That was enough for Joe Torre, who replaced Wright with displaced starter Aaron Small. Brought into an unfair bases-loaded, no-outs situation, Small got Vernon Wells to foul out to Giambi at first, and got a hard ground ball to second base from Shea Hillenbrand. Unfortunately, Hillenbrand’s grounder was a little too hard and Robinson Cano, rather than getting his body in front of it, tried to scoop it to turn two and wound up having the ball ricochet off the inside of his elbow and into right field, scoring two runs and placing runners at the corners. Erik Hinske followed with a sac fly to make it 7-0 and Small struck out Zaun to end the inning.
Without the errors by Matsui and Cano (the first of which was far more egregious than the latter) the game would have been tied 2-2. Had Zaun’s comebacker driven Wright from the game, prompting Torre to bring in Small with one out in the first, the game likely would have stood at 4-2 after an inning and a half. Instead, it was 7-2 and, despite a tremendous performance from Small, who pitched 5 2/3 more scoreless innings, allowing just four singles, striking out three and walking none, the Yankee offense just couldn’t make up the difference.
