Daily Archives: May 19, 2009

CC Sabathia pitched another fine game and the Yankees scored seven runs in the seventh inning to win their seventh game in a row. 

Final score: Yanks 9, Orioles 1. 

It was a close game again until just after Kate Smith sung God Bless America.*  Sabathia allowed a first-inning run but Alex Rodriguez crushed a two-run homer in the bottom of the inning to give the Yanks the lead for good.  With a man on, Rodriguez quickly fell behind Brad Bergesen 0-2.  He fouled off a couple of tough pitches, laid off a couple of breaking balls out-of-the-zone and worked the count full.  Then a back-door fastball that darted across the plate but too high was struck for the homer. 

It made that sound, that true, uncompromising sound of a ball being hit on the sweet spot.  The kind of that makes you weak in the knees, the kind you dreamed about as a kid, the sound that makes you sit up like a dog bolting awake by a noise just outside the front door.  (They never get the sound right in the movies, have you ever noticed that?) 

Rodriguez took his textbook-fluid swing–the ball came to the bat as if drawn by a magnet, and then shot off deep into the night.  Rodriguez just missed two more homers later in the game.  Missed ’em by that much.  But he didn’t miss the first one and it was a thing of beauty. 

So was Sabathia, who nursed the one-run lead through seven.  The Orioles didn’t stand a chance, collecting three hits and a walk against Poppa Large, who struck out seven and lowered his ERA to 3.43.  The big man was brilliant.  Bergesen, who also pitched well, getting a boat load of ground balls early on, left the game with a couple of runners on and one out in the bottom of the seventh.  Chris Ray relieved him and got torched.  Derek Jeter got the big hit, a three-run double with the bases loaded and Mark Teixeira hit his 11th of the season, a shot into the second deck in right field, to put the cherry on top of what turned out to be a laugher.

Brian Bruney, just activated off the DL, pitched a scoreless inning and the Yanks gained a game in the east as the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays, 2-1 in Boston.

*Do you know I ran into two Yankee fans today who complained that while yes, the Yankees are winning lately, they are only winning by the slimmest of margins, so…as if winning the close ones don’t count as much.  I’m dead serious.

The Yankees and Orioles split their first six head-to-head games this season, all of which were played in Baltimore, but the three Yankee losses were all directly attributable to poor starting pitching performances: CC Sabathia on Opening Day (4 1/3 IP, 6 R), Chien-Ming Wang the next day (3 2/3 IP, 7 R), and Phil Hughes two Saturdays ago (1 2/3 IP, 8 R). The Orioles scored just five runs against the Yankees in the other three games, while the Yankees have scored at least four runs in all six games and are averaging 5.83 R/G on the series.

That’s been par for the course for the O’s this year, as only the Nationals have allowed more runs per game than the O’s 5.92. That’s hardly come as a surprise. The first sentence of my season preview for the O’s back on April 6 attacked the quality of their starting rotation. Now, just shy of the quarterpole, the O’s starting rotation sports a 5.76 ERA, better than only that of the Phillies, who come to town on Friday.

The O’s are optimistic about the return of lefty Rich Hill from the disabled list, and his first start gave them reason to be, but the Yankees won’t see him this week. Nor will they face early-season staff ace Koji Uehara, who has held the Yanks to two runs over 11 innings thus far this season and sports a 4.34 ERA that’s nearly a run better than that of the O’s next best starter. Instead they’ll kick things off tonight against 23-year-old rookie Brad Bergesen, who has lasted six full innings just twice in five starts (and never more than six full) and has allowed at least three runs every time out, though he’s also not done worse than the five runs in four innings he allowed in his second major league start.

Bergesen and tomorrow’s starter, Jeremy Guthrie, who has two nearly identical quality starts against the Yankees this year, have been middling thus far, sporting .500 records and ERAs in the low 5.00s. Thursday’s starter, Adam Eaton, has been awful (2-4, 7.93 ERA). Things don’t look much better in the pen, though Danys Baez has made a nice return from Tommy John surgery and George Sherrill continues to cling to his closer job despite Dave Trembley announcing that the role would be shared.

At the plate, the O’s have lost one of their hottest hitters, DH/left fielder Luke Scott (.303/.384/.515) to the DL, and have been without their hottest, center fielder Adam Jones (.370/.426/.669), since Wednesday due to a tender hamstring.

Jones is expected to return to the lineup tonight, which is bad news for the Yankees, though CC Sabathia could help get him back off on the wrong foot. Sabathia avenged his Opening Day loss with a four-hit shutout of the O’s two turns ago. He then held the league-best Toronto offense to two runs over eight innings his last time out. After struggling with his control in three of his first four starts, Sabathia has walked just six men in his four (1.17 BB/9) and seems to have over come his one-bad-inning syndrome in his last two strong performances.

It’s easy to say that players like Sabathia and Mark Teixeira are starting to click with the Yankees riding a six-game winning streak, but those performances are part of why the Yankees are on a six-game winning streak to begin with. Tonight, CC looks to make it seven. I like his chances.

Hideki Matsui returns to the lineup today as the DH batting fifth, and Brian Bruney is supposed to be activated before game time. No word yet on which reliever is getting shipped out to make room for him, though I suspect Edwar Ramirez, who unlike Jose Veras has options left, could be on his way to Scranton.

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My nephew turned five last week.  For his birthday he watched Star Wars for the first time. (Star Wars was the first movie I remember seeing in the movie theater as a kid; it was released a few days before I turned six.) There was a Jedi training session in Inwood Park and then there was the screening.  My nephew has been talking about the movie for weeks.  He even had a favorite character–Chewy. But his friends were more interested in his toys so they didn’t actually watch much of the movie.  The real screening took place the next day and I arrived minutes before the Death Star was blown to smithereens.

A few days earlier, I stopped by the electric circus known as Toys R Us in Times Square to pick up a present.  I headed to the Star Wars area and was dismayed; I could hardly find anything that had to do with the original movie (though I did eventually find one box that contained small figurines of Obi Wan, Luke and the two droids).  When I got home and told my wife Emily how shocked I was at the lack of toys from the original movie, she turned to me, and in her best Alice Kramden said, “Sweetheart, that movie came out over thirty years ago.”

I looked at her blankly.  Blinked.  Then I unpacked the toys, took out my teeth, changed my diaper and went to bed.  It was four in the afternoon.

While Angel Berroa continued to sit idle on the Yankees’ bench, the team designated right-handed pitchers Steven Jackson and Eric Hacker for assigment to make room for catcher Kevin Cash, in wake of the injuries to both Jorge Posada and Jose Molina, and veteran right-hander Brett Tomko, in wake of the bullpen’s struggles and his own dominance in spring training and Triple-A Scranton.

This all amounts to very little as Jackson was on the 25-man roster for nine days in April without ever getting into a game, Cash is serving as a back-up to Francisco Cervelli and has gone 1-for-10 since being recalled, Hacker struggled in three starts for Scranton (0-1, 7.88 ERA), and Tomko has thrown just 2 1/3 innings since being called up. Still, it’s worth noting no that Jackson and Hacker have reached their destinations.

In both cases, that destination is Indianapolis, as in the Indianapolis Indians, the Triple-A club of the Pittsburgh Pirates. There they join former Yankee farmhand Daniel McCutchen and aspire to join the major league team which features former Yankees Ross Ohlendorf and Jeff Karstens in its rotation, those last three having gone to Pittsburgh along with outfield prospect Jose Tabata in the Xavier Nady/Damaso Marte trade. Here’s a quick look at each of these former Yanks as well as Romulo Sanchez, the hard throwing reliever the Yankees obtained in exchange for Hacker.

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It weren’t pretty, but the Yanks took a broom to the Twins last night, capping off their thrilling “Walkoff Weekend” (TM) with a 7-6 win to complete a four-game sweep of Minnesota and extend their winning streak to six games.

Unlike the previous three games, most of the action in last night’s contest took place in the first inning. The Twins pushed across a pair of first-inning runs against Andy Pettitte, with Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau each delivering an RBI single, the second enabled by Melky Cabrera missing the cutoff man on the first allowing Mauer to go to second.

Unfazed, the Yanks scored four against lefty Glen Perkins before making their first out as Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon singled then Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez each homered to left field. After Nick Swisher flied out to the warning track, a shot that looked like a third-straight homer off the bat, Robinson Cano sliced a ground-rule double into the stands along-side left field and Melky Cabrera singled him home. After a passed ball and a Ramiro Peña fly out, Francisco Cervelli hit a chopper up the middle that somehow missed Perkins’ glove, then hit the side of second base, avoiding both diving middle infielder. On the YES broadcast, Ken Singleton remarked that, “if there ever was a seeing-eye base hit, that was it.” Cervelli’s hit plated Cabrera with the sixth Yankee run and drove Perkins from the game with just two outs in the first.

Knuckleballer R.A. Dickey held things down from there with 4 1/3 scoreless innings, while the Twins tried to chip away. Michael Cuddyer led off the fourth with a solo homer to make it 6-3. Carlos Gomez singled, stole second, and scored on a Denard Span single in the sixth to make it 6-4. Span later hit a solo homer off Edwar Ramirez in the eighth, but that came after Teixeira added a solo shot of his own in the bottom of the seventh, this one from the left side of the plate, the second time he’s switch-hit homers in a game this season.

That extra run proved to be the winning margin. With Mariano Rivera having thrown 44 pitches over three innings the previous two days, Joe Girardi gave his closer the night off. Lefty Phil Coke, who relieved Ramirez and struck out Morneau for the last out of the eighth, was given the ninth in Rivera’s place. It wasn’t pretty. Coke’s first two pitches to leadoff man Joe Crede, who entered the game with a .296 on-base percentage, were balls. He recovered to go 2-2, but Crede fouled off four full-count offerings and ultimately drew a ten-pitch walk. Matt Tolbert then ran for Crede and moved to second on a wild pitch, to third on a groundout that required Teixeira to range far to his right, and home on another groundout. With two outs, Carlos Gomez, who entered the game with a .286 on-base percentage, nearly replicated Crede’s at-bat, getting ahead 2-0, then even at 2-2 and ultimately working a seven-pitch walk. Mike Redmond seemed to be doing the same thing (2-0, then 3-1, then a pair of full-count fouls), but mercifully grounded to Cano for the final out of the game. Coke’s performance made the news of Brian Bruney’s impending activation (expected tonight) all the more welcome, though to the always forthcoming Coke’s credit, he humorously confessed to having been unnerved by the situation.

As for Teixeira, he was hitting .182/.354/.338  with three home runs and 10 RBIs on May 3, but has hit .351/.397/.789 with seven home runs and 18 RBIs in his last 14 games. Though his average will take a while to rebound (he’s still at just .239), he’s on pace for 45 homers and 127 RBIs, even with that slow start factored in. On-pace numbers can be very misleading, and Teixeira’s current single-season best for home runs is “just” 43, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Tex comes very close to those numbers come late September. Teixeira’s career month-by-month splits show steady improvement with each flip of the calendar, and his defense was an important part of the Yankees’ sweep of the Twins. He’s going to be a lot of fun to watch the rest of the way as, by extension, are the Yankees.

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