Daily Archives: July 18, 2009

Saturday was a great day for a baseball game. It was a gorgeous, sunny, breezy, summer day and the Yankees and Tigers each had their ace on the hill. CC Sabathia and Justin Verlander delivered on the matchup’s promise, each holding their opponent scoreless for six innings.

Verlander actually out-pitched Sabathia for those first six frames, but CC continually fought his way out of jams. He needed 51 pitches to get through the first two innings, but stranded a pair of runners in each, then got inning-ending double plays in the third and fourth before finally working a 1-2-3 fifth inning. The Tigers got two men in scoring position in the sixth when Marcus Thames beat out an infield single to the shortstop hole and Magglio Ordoñez doubled him to third, but Sabathia got Ryan Rayburn to fly out to shallow left, holding Thames, and got Brandon Inge to pop out to strand both runners. He then worked a 1-2-3 seventh, finishing his day after 114 pitches.

The Yankees managed just two singles and walk off Verlander over the first five innings. In the sixth, Johnny Damon doubled off the base of the right-field wall with two outs, but was stranded when Verlander got a favorable high strike call on a fastball to get Mark Teixeira looking for his sixth strikeout of the game. Alex Rodriguez led off the bottom of the seventh, took ball one, fouled off strike one, then lifted Verlander’s 92nd pitch to the first row in right field for a stalemate-breaking homer that gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead. With two outs in the inning, Robinson Cano singled up the middle, moved to second on a Nick Swisher double to left, and scored when Melky Cabrera beat out a grounder to deep short.

That extra run proved crucial when Thames connected for a two-out homer off Alfredo Aceves in the eighth. In to protect the slim 2-1 lead, Mariano Rivera worked a perfect ninth to give the Yankees the game, series, and season series over the Tigers. It was a crisp, two-hour 39-minute game on a crisp, beautiful afternoon. Nice.

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Friday night’s win was a thoroughly rewarding one for the Yankees. Mark Teixeira came through with a big three-run homer to cap a comeback. Phil Hughes helped nail it down by striking out the side in two scoreless innings of relief. Mariano Rivera got the save, and everyone in the Bronx went home happy.

The win also clinched a tie in the season series with leaders of the AL Central, and most importantly, gave the Yankees the game they needed to have with the Tigers two All-Stars, Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson, scheduled to pitch the final two games of the series. Verlander goes today in a rematch with CC Sabathia. Those two last faced off in Detroit on April 27, the first game of the season series. Entering that game, Verlander was 0-2 with a 9.00 ERA. That night, he shut the Yankees out for seven innings, striking out nine and walking none as the Tigers prevailed 4-2. Dating back to that start, Verlander has gone 10-2 with a 2.22 ERA, 124 strikeouts in 101 1/3 innings, a 0.99 WHIP, and a 4.26 K/BB. He’s been a bit more human of late, however, posting a 4.25 ERA over his last six starts with a 1.42 WHIP.

CC Sabathia pitched well in that April game as well, striking out seven in eight innings, but a three-run sixth inning, keyed by a two run home run by Magglio Ordoñez, cost him and the Yankees the game. After a mediocre April, CC was great in May, but has been a bit erratic since then, going 3-3 with a 4.47 ERA. In his last start, he coughed up five runs in 6 2/3 innings in Anaheim and two starts before that he allowed six runs in 5 2/3 against the weak-hitting Mariners. Like the Yankees other big-ticket free agent, Mark Teixeira, CC has a history of strong second-halves. Tex got off on the right foot last night. It’s CC turn today.

The Yankees have been off since Sunday, and tonight was A.J. Burnett’s first start since July 8th. Perhaps as a result it was a little reminiscent of the Tin Man’s first scene in The Wizard of Oz (“He said ‘oil can’!”)*. Given that his stuff was a bit on the fuzzy side, and that he allowed six hits and five walks while striking out just one batter, it’s some combination of impressive and lucky that he got through six innings and kept the Yankees right in the game. New York started off the second half of the season with another comeback win and beat the Tigers 5-3.

Lucas French tossed a nice five innings for Detroit and held the Yankees to just one earned run – Hideki Matsui’s RBI single in the first, which tied the game at 1-1. But the Tigers kept chipping away at Burnett. New York added another run in the fifth, when Johnny Damon scored after a Mark Teixeira single and an error by left fielder Josh Anderson, but they still trailed 3-2.

It wasn’t until the seventh inning that the Bombers broke through, off of Joel Zumaya (a player whose career I’ve followed with interest, not only because he’s fun to watch but because he suffered one of the oddest injuries in baseball history… I mean, injuries are not generally funny, of course, but come on). As rain started to come down hard, Jeter singled with one of those classic inside-out swings of his, and Damon doubled. Then Teixeira, with his third big hit of the night, took a remarkably graceful swing at a 99 mph 3-1 fastball and knocked it into the second deck in right field.

That gave the Yankees a 5-3 lead, and that’s how things would stay, as Phil Hughes was decidedly un–rusty. He pitched two full innings, and though he allowed three hits he also struck out six Tigers – and reached 97 mph (on the YES radar gun, anyway) for the first time anyone can remember.

Mariano Rivera came in to pitch the ninth and it went pretty much like you’d expect.

Boston won, too, so the Yankees remain three games out of first, but they’ve also got a 3.5-game lead over Texas and Tampa Bay for the Wild Card. More importantly, regular baseball is back. Whose idea was it to schedule an off-day right after the All-Star break, anyway? The person or persons responsible should be led to a basement room and forced to listen to a loop of Chris Berman’s Home Run Derby calls until they’re prepared to offer a heartfelt apology.

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*Please note that I am in no way trying to imply that the tinsmith forgot to give Burnett a heart.