“It’s harder each year to sustain because everybody’s after you,” Washington said. “But you have to have pride in what you’re doing and you can’t forget the fundamental things that this game has to offer. Then the talent part of it comes into play. I got a lot of talent, and I work hard to try to get them to understand the fundamental part of it.

“But it’s tough. It’s not easy to win. It’s easy to lose — but it’s not easy to win. To wake up every morning knowing you’re going to come to the yard and everything you have inside of you, you’ve got to leave there. Winning is tough. It’s a grind. It’s a lot on your body, a lot on your mind. It’s a lot to keep guys on the same page, to quit thinking individual and think team and think group.”

–Texas Rangers Manager, Ron Washington
(David Lennon, Newsday)

Last Wednesday at this time the Yankees had just won three straight from the Rangers and were on their way to a 5-2 record for the week. Nothing was fucked, nobody was being un-Dude.

Tonight, the White Sox completed a three-game sweep against the Yanks, the Rays won again and New York’s lead in the American League East is down to three.

Phil Hughes pitched a fine game, gave up a couple of runs in seven innings, but Chris Sale, a bony 23-year-old-lefty who could double for Ichabod Crane on October 31, was better. His delivery is too jerky and he’s too tall to remind us of Ron Guidry, although they share the same number, but his stuff is no joke–fastball, change-up, slider. And all coming sidearm. Kid knows how to pitch, too. He allowed three hits and one run–which came on a solo home run by Derek Jeter (who has homered in each game in Chicago).

The score was 2-1 in the ninth and Addison Reed, another tall pitcher, came on for the save. The Yanks were 0-44 this season when trailing after eight innings. Nick Swisher got in a couple of good swings before he became the 14th Yankee to strikeout on the night. Robinson Cano lashed the first pitch he saw to left field, right passed a crouching Kevin Youkilis at third base and into left field for a base hit. Mark Teixeira got ahead 2-1 and then a high fastball was called for a strike. Tex paced away from the batter’s box and complained. He had good reason to bitch, especially after he waved at the next pitch, a breaking ball falling away from him, for the second out.

So it came down to Eric Chavez, a pinch-hitter, who worked the count even and then grounded out.

Final Score: White Sox 2, Yanks 1.

And sometimes our favorite game goes something like this:

Better luck in Cleveland, suckas.

The Magic Number, as we all know, is three.

[Featured Image: Beatriz Martin Vidal via Gas Station; Nelson via Gruesome Twosome]

Derek Jeter jumped the first pitch of the game like a spring-loaded mouse trap. It was a fastball, of the let’s-get-ahead-in-the-count variety from Francisco Liriano, and by the time Jeter’s bat sprung through the strike zone, all that was left was a bloody stump. The ball sliced through the twilight and cleared the fence with ease. I worried that the game had just yielded it’s marquee moment, making the prospect of the ensuing nine innings rather daunting.

Derek Jeter’s resurgence has been well noted around these parts and much of our focus as been on the future. How many more hits can he get? How many more contracts? It’s been the best part of the season. Well here’s something encouraging: In Derek Jeter’s career from 1998-2009, he slugged under .400 in two consecutive months just three times (September 2003-April 2004, May-June 2006, April-May 2008). From May 2010 to June 2011, Derek Jeter has slugged under .400 for eight consecutive months. In the last eight months of play, he’s been over .400 six times.

I don’t mean to say we should expect vintage Jeter for any extended period of time, but at least we can guess that the Ceti-eel that crawled into his aural canal, wrapped itself around his cerebellum and sapped his strength for 2010 and half of 2011 has died and been expelled. Probably through the nasal cavity with a mess of blood and pus. If Jeter stops hitting for power in 2013, we’ll know it laid eggs.

About the other nine innings… I don’t want to alarm you, but Ivan Nova let up a few extra base hits. A double and a triple. A solo homer. A grand slam. That’s another thing that’s so encouraging about Jeter’s re-found power, he’s slugging over .400 without the benefit of facing Ivan Nova. Nova has allowed the most extra base hits in the league and watching him pitch several times this year, I’m not going to bother fact-checking that statement. It just reeks of truthiness.

Francisco Liriano matched up with an umpire that wouldn’t give him a millimeter, let alone an inch. I figured the Yankees would recognize this and walk around the bases. But apart from Mark Teixeira and Andruw Jones, nobody was interested in that approach. Liriano made it through six innings. Almost any other Yankee team in the last fifteen years would have knocked him out in the fourth.

The Yankees lost 7-3 and were reduced to staring at the scoreboard and hoping the Royals would eke out a run against the Rays. The Royals came through and won 1-0 in ten innings. A sigh of relief for the Yanks, I guess. Four games seems a lot bigger than three, but it’s not really.

Photo via AP/Charles Rex Arbogast

Last night? Bad loss. Tonight? A new game.

Notes from Chad Jennings.

Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Andruw Jones LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Jayson Nix 3B
Casey McGehee DH
Russell Martin C

Never mind the preamble: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Some games are uglier than others and last night was a slow, boring game between the Yankees and White Sox. It was the kind of game that was going to feel painful for the losing team, more than usual. Not because it was dramatic, either. But because each pitcher threw 473 pitches to each hitter.

The Yanks had an early 3-0 lead and chased Gavin Floyd from the game in the third inning but only had a three run lead. Should have been more. It was no surprise when the White Sox scored five in the fifth, chasing Freddy Garcia, who’d been sharp in the early innings. At one point, with two men on base, and just one out, Garcia fell behind Paul Konerko 2-0. The YES camera showed Yankee pitching coach Larry Rothschild in the dugout. The man sighed and that expression summed up the game.

Yanks took the lead back in the sixth when they scored three runs–Jeter hit a dinger and oh yeah, went 4-5 on the night–but the bullpen gave it right back as the White Sox won, 9-6.

An unbecoming outing for the Yankee pitching staff.

And the Rays are now four back…Creepin’.

As crazy as it might sound, I don’t get as much pleasure out of watching the Yankees beat up on Josh Beckett anymore. He’s still the bad guy, but it simply isn’t as much fun when you expect him to get rocked, you know? Heck, even Red Sox fans are tired of him, so it’s hard for me to summon the energy to despise him. The cocky, young kid who silenced the Yankee bats to clinch a World Series almost a decade ago has somehow become just another pitcher, kind of like the neighborhood dog that chased you mercilessly when you were a kid, but years later couldn’t rise from his front porch.

And so it was on Sunday night.

Derek Jeter jumped on Beckett’s second pitch of the night and sent it deep over the head of Jacoby Ellsbury in center field for a double, and eventually came home on a two-out double from Curtis Granderson, and the Yanks were off and running. Beckett was stewing.

That one run almost looked like it would be enough. Hiroki Kuroda was on the mound for the Yankees, fresh off his two-hit shutout of the Texas Rangers, and he picked up right where he left off. He set down the first eight hitters without incident before Nick Punto singled, then cruised through the next three innings allowing just another harmless single. Suddenly it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine him starting Game 1 in October.

To give Kuroda a bit of a cushion, the Yankee hitters chipped in a run here and a run there. With one out in the third, Jeter replayed his first inning at bat and crushed another double over Ellsbury’s head, this one bouncing over the wall. Nick Swisher followed that with a walk, and then Jeter and Swisher pulled off a double steal without a throw. Beckett’s next pitch skipped away from Jarod Saltalamacchia, allowing Jeter to score, and it was 2-0.

In the fourth inning, Ichiro came up to the plate with two outs. I always liked watching Ichiro hit, so it hasn’t been hard for me to start rooting for him as a Yankee. You would always here people talk about how he would effortlessly put balls into the seats during batting practice and claim that he could hit twenty or thirty homers a season if he wanted to, and he gave proof in this at bat. Beckett left a pitch up in the zone, and Ichiro jumped all over it, rifling it into the seats in right for a 3-0 Yankee lead. Two innings later he shot another ball into the bleachers, just because he could. I know the Moneyball folks led an OPS-driven backlash against Ichiro early in his career, but as he stepped to the top of the dugout steps, lifting his helmet to reveal his greying hair as he acknowledged the cheering crowd, I could only think that this was one of the best hitters ever to play the game.

Kuroda was still on the mound in the top of the seventh when the revitalized Adrian González homered to right. Since González plays first base for my fantasy team (Mike Pagliarulo Fan Club), I couldn’t get too broken up over it, and neither did Kuroda, though perhaps for different reasons. He finished the seventh, then ended his night by setting down the Sox in order in the eighth. Rafael Soriano untucked the ninth, and the game was over. Yankees 4, Red Sox 1.

[Photo Credit: Jason Szenes/Getty Images]

Whadda ya gunna do? Our man Phelps pitched a solid game. Game up a two-run home run to Adrian Gonzalez in the first inning and it wasn’t even a bad pitch. Thing is, Jon Lester pitched like the old Jon Lester, one we’d come to fear. The Yanks couldn’t get a key hit but the credit goes to ol’ Lester.

Sox 4, Yanks 1. Moving on.

The only drag is that the Orioles and the Rays won. The Rays, man, huge win, and they is making a push now. They trail the Yanks by five.

[Photo Credit: Ben Pier]

I had a friend over for dinner last night and we watched the game, rooted for the Yanks, and were happy when they beat the Red Sox, 6-4. But we talked and talked so the details of the game evaporated once it was over. I remember cursing Phil Hughes for giving us flashbacks of Clay Rapada’s botched 1-6-3 double play earlier this season, and then cursing some more when Hughes served up a meatball to Dustin Pedrioa.

Then there was fist pumps and “Oh Yeahs” for the five solo home runs hit by the Yanks, including the 250th homer of Derek Jeter’s career. Also, a long, impressive at bat by Curtis Granderson that resulted in a line drive single, and a “Fuck Yes” for the bloop base hit Jason Nix hit on an 0-2 pitch to put the Yanks ahead for good. Smiles all around when Pedrioa hit one to the wall in the eighth, and hopped in the air as he rounded first in frustration.

I don’t remember much just that the outcome was good.

For clarity see:

Pete Abraham in the Boston Globe; David Waldstein in the Times; Mark Feinsand in the News; and William Juliano at Pinstriped Alley.

[Photo Via: mOrtality]

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where the teams come from and what their lousy records are, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

I’ll tell you what bores the hell out of me, when a team has all of these good players on the roster, but then trots out a lineup made up of all the bad ones. Every team’s got bad players on it, I’m not saying they don’t. It’s just that when a team is really stacked, I mean when they’ve got hot-shots at just about every position, it’s really boring when those players just take a seat on the bench all afternoon. And the bad ones that play, you’d think they’d seize the opportunity and really show what they’ve got, but more often than not they just go out there and remind you of why they are on the bench in the first place.

Take Andruw Jones, the hot-shot in left field. He couldn’t catch the ball at all today, though I heard he used catch it like a madman. There used to be nobody better at catching the old pop-fly. I admit it. But not anymore. Now he’s the type of outfielder that looks up in the sky on a bright afternoon, gets confused and falls down. Goddamn house-money lineup. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

And that lineup’s not too gorgeous for this pitcher the Yankees have, a pitcher named Ivan Nova. He’s good and all, I’m not saying he’s bad. I’m really not.  But the thing about Nova is that he’s not good all the time. In fact, when you get right down to it, he’s only been very good a few times, but for some reason everybody thinks that’s the norm. If you ask me, I’d say he’s much more the mediocre type, not necessarily bad, but not as good as the phonies tend to give him credit for. All I know is he was lousy today, so mediocre would have been a substantial improvement. It really would.

Old Nova started things off with a bang. He really did. The Rangers had two runs on the board and the ice cubes in my drink hadn’t even started to melt yet. And I hate it when ice cubes melt too quickly. It’s quite a problem during day games. You’ve got this perfectly good drink in front of you, and then you look away for a second, just a quick look at the scoreboard, and sure enough the ice cubes are sweating. It doesn’t totally ruin the drink, I’m not saying that. But it certainly doesn’t do it any good.

Derek Holland, the pitcher for the Texas Rangers, must have been thrilled to see all those Yankee hot-shots sitting on the bench. Old Holland is the type of pitcher that’s actually quite talented but you’d never know it because he sucks so much. He really does. He’s the kind of guy that wears a phony mustache to make you think he’s a sophisticated Ivy League gentleman but what it winds up doing, you see, is making him look like a goddamn pervert. But if you actually watch him pitch, if you sit down and take the time to really watch him sling the old ball at the dish, you’d see he throws it in there quite hard. I have to admit.

I see a guy like Old Holland with all the talent in the world and a five-something ERA and it depresses the hell out of me. I get so down in the dumps I bust out crying right there at the goddamn computer.  It makes me think of these boys I know from the Yankees named Philip Hughes and Joba Chamberlain. You never saw pitchers come up for the Yankees with talent like that, talent so obvious it was practically coming out of their socks. And it’s not like the Yankees never brought up any other pitchers. They did, all the time. But those pitchers, each one was the type of pitcher that’s always allowing first inning homers and then leaving you sitting in the can. What’s all that Yankee dough good for if you’re always bringing up pitchers that give up first-inning homers? Nothing, that’s what.

There he was, Old Holland, wearing that phony mustache in the middle of goddamn Yankee Stadium of all places and trying to sneak a fastball by Mark Teixeira in the sixth inning. And Mark Teixeira, mind you, he just wears Old Holland out like the back seat of a New York City taxi cab. He really does. Old Holland couldn’t get Teixeira out in a big spot if his life depended on him getting that out. But this time in the sixth inning, when Teixeira represented the tying run, what he did was he threw this slider in the dirt to a spot where Teixeira couldn’t get it – it damn near killed me when he threw it in that spot. It was actually quite tricky.

Old Holland must have been feeling pretty good about that slider in the dirt, maybe too good. Because you see what he did on the next pitch to that Andruw Jones, the hot-shot that fell down earlier, he laid one right down the middle. I mean right down goddamn Broadway. And Old Jones, you know he wasn’t feeling too good about falling down, so he must have been so relieved to just see this pitch coming right down the middle. He didn’t look confused on that pitch as he tied up the game at four. He really didn’t.

The goddamn game would have ended right there if it had any sense. But, of course it didn’t. It went on for three more innings. It went on long enough for all the bad feelings the Yankees erased in the sixth to become bad feelings again in the seventh. The worst part, the very worst part of the whole collapse is that pitcher I was telling you about before, Joba Chamberlain, came out with the game on the line and they needed him to be his old self, his old hot-shot self. The thing of it is, that guy is gone. This other guy that looks like the same guy but isn’t as good, he’s here to stay. And about the only way you can tell the difference is by looking at that scoreboard. That goddamn scoreboard just about kills me. It’s just depressing as hell.

See that’s what I don’t like about baseball. It’s depressing as hell. You’ve got a guy falling down in the outfield feeling down in the dumps about it. You’ve got the same guy tying the game with a homerun and feeling all warm and fuzzy. And then you’ve got the same guy coming up with a chance to re-take the lead and striking out and going down in the dumps again. Who wants to play a game that can rip you up like that? Nobody with any sense, that’s who.

A lot of people here, especially this one accountant, are asking me if the Yankees are going to win tomorrow when they start their series with the goddamn Red Sox. It’s such a stupid question. How are you supposed to know if they’re going to win a game before they play it? The answer is, you don’t.

One-run games haven’t been kind to the Yankees. So, when they failed to add an insurance run with two on and no outs in the bottom of the eighth, Joe Girardi may have developed a lump in his throat. Then, when an Eric Chavez throwing error, which was actually a missed call by the first base umpire, prolonged the game with two outs in the top of the ninth, the Yankees’ skipper probably swallowed hard once again. Instead of being bad omens, however, these unfortunate late game developments only delayed what turned out to be the Bronx Bombers’ eighth straight home victory against the Texas Rangers. Considering the almost two hours spent waiting for the rain to stop, it was a small price to pay.

The Yankees 3-2 victory not only pushed the team’s record in one-run games to 15-17, but also marked their second consecutive victory when scoring three or fewer runs. Before the series, the Yankees had the second lowest winning percentage in the A.L. when scoring three or fewer, while the Rangers had the best mark when allowing no more than that many, so maybe the team’s luck in low scoring games is starting to change? Or, maybe the Yankees are just getting outstanding starting pitching?

Following the lead of David Phelps and Hiroki Kuroda, Freddy Garcia kept the Rangers off the board until the fourth inning, extending a string of 19 consecutive innings in which Texas failed to score. However, that came to an immediate halt when Josh Hamilton hit a laser shot into the right field second deck. Ironically, it was the first regular season Yankee Stadium home run ever hit by the Rangers’ center fielder, whose home run derby performance in the Bronx remains legend. And, Hamilton must have enjoyed the trip around the bases because in the sixth inning he followed it up a 450-foot blast deep into the bleachers.

Hamilton’s two solo homers chipped away at the Yankees’ 3-0 advantage, which was built in the bottom of the third inning. For the third straight game, Nick Swisher gave the Yankees their first lead of the game, but instead of a home run, the first baseman dunked a double down the left field line that scored Jayson Nix. A sacrifice fly by Curtis Granderson and two-out RBI single by the white hot Eric Chavez, who went 3 for 3, capped the scoring in the inning and, as it turned out, the game.

Aside from the long balls, Garcia allowed only two other hits in 6 2/3 innings before giving way to the trio of Boone Logan, David Robertson and Rafael Soriano, who collectively retired all but one of the hitters (the aforementioned error/bad call) they faced. As a staff, the Yankees have only allowed four runs in three games to a team that entered the series averaging five, so, needless to say, the starters and bullpen have both been equal to the challenge presented by the reigning American League champs.

Will the struggling Ivan Nova be able to take the baton in tomorrow’s matinee? Either way, the Bronx Bombers have made an early statement and, perhaps, reasserted themselves as the team to beat in the American League.

On those nights when I get home late, I have to look for clues about what’s going on the in the Yankee game. My phone’s itching to tell me the score from the confines of my bag, but taking it out on the walk home isn’t a great idea.

Tonight I started my journey around 8:30 and it was already weird because I hadn’t had any score updates yet. I figured it must be busted – no way both of these teams were going scoreless for 90 minutes. The next clue came as I got off the subway at 207th st. it was about 9:20. I spotted guy in a Giambi shirt and fitted Yankee cap exiting as well. That looks like a gamer, I thought. I was sure they had come from the game when his girlfriend trailed him up the stairs wearing her Jeter shirt.

At 9:20? No possible way a Yankee-Ranger game was over by in two hours and change. I figured it was a blowout one way or the other. Neither Giambi nor Jeter was giving anything away however. Couple a Tom Landrys. I hoofed it up Broadway and passed the first bar that would have the game on. Commercial on one screen, slo-mo, extreme-closeup replay of a guy in a gray jersey taking a big cut on the other. Shit, that’s gotta be a Ranger roadie, I thought.

The next spot was the cigar shop and I had to slow my stride to take in the full scene. They had their screen split four ways, taking in action all across the league. The Yanks game was such a dud it didn’t even make one of the quarters. OK, now I was convinced. 16-0 Rangers.

I came home and did those things you have to do even though all you want to do is to go right to the scoreboard. But my wife wasn’t feeling well and I took care of her for a little while. She had real news to convey about one of the kids messing up his forearm in a scooter fall. We might need X-Rays. Well shit, that blowout doesn’t seem so important now. I took my shower, I poured my wife some water and helped her off to bed. I ate a slice of cheese in the kitchen. OK, no more stalling, time to face the music.

Holy Shit! I said it loud enough to startle my wife. Hiroki Kuroda just went out and dropped a complete game shut out on one of the best offenses in baseball. He did it with style too, taking a no-hitter into the seventh before Elvis Andrus lucked into an infield single with one of the most lifeless hacks you’ll ever see.

From the numerous highlights of Kuroda’s offerings, you can see how almost every batter is wrong-footed. He’s hiding the ball so well, and releasing each pitch from the same spot that the hitters can’t gauge the speed until it’s too late. From the clips, his location looks good, not superb. It’s that he has the entire lineup deceived. Kuroda’s final, glorious numbers, 9 innings, 2 hits, 2 walks, 5 Ks.

The only problem tonight was that the Yanks couldn’t score any runs. Kuroda gets the least run-support by far among all Yankee starters – a full run behind the rest of the rotation and over two runs behind CC, and tonight it actually went down.

In the seventh, they finally gave Kuroda something to work with. Jeter collected his second hit of the night (and passed Nap Lajoie on the all-time hit list) and knocked effective starter Matt Harrison out of the game. Ron Washington called on Alexi Ogando, a hard thrower to be sure. Nick Swisher worked him over but good and when Ogando tried to beat him with a high hard one on a full count, Swisher jumped the 98 MPH gas and launched it into the bullpen. Just for shits and giggles, Mark Teixeira ripped a 99 MPH pitch into the seats as well.

The final was 3-0 and it took 2 hours 35 minutes to complete. I guess Giambi and Jeter bolted after the no-no was busted up and the Yanks hit their homers. Can’t blame them, the game was over.

Kuroda’s game reminds me a lot of those ALDS games against the Rangers in 1998 and 1999. The Rangers could hit all day, but in those games the Yanks shut them down. Whether it was El Duque, Pettitte, Wells… didn’t matter. Now, these Rangers are a much better vintage than those late nineties teams. They’ve got a few starters that are still healthy and a fierce bullpen. The teams are a lot closer now than they were back then. That’s what makes this game so damned good – it might have even impressed McKayla Maroney.

Photos by Seth Wenig/AP

What a lovely night to return to recapping. Summer hit my apartment like a solid right hook this June, sent us sprawling around the East Coast for months. Vacations in Pittsburgh, DC, Gloucester and Maine. Work travel to more cities than I can list.

In the meantime Yanks went up, up, down, splat and are now back to somewhere around sea level. I was happy my first game back at the Banter would be a CC start – best chance for blowout win. So much for that. David Phelps got the call instead. Lucky for me, he can pitch.

As David Cone and Paul O’Neill covered in an especially jovial night in the YES booth, Phelps has the requisite arsenal to pitch in the big leagues and enough confidence in his various offerings to throw any pitch at any time. His numbers tonight aren’t going to knock you out, but this wasn’t the Blue Jays farm team, this was the defending American League Champion at something close to full strength.

With an 80-pitch limit, Phelps completed five innings and allowed six hits, walked one and hit another. He struck out three, but more impressively, other than David Murphy, nobody could square him up. Murphy, a bench bat on a “Yankee-killer” team, blasted a homer and double, but the rest of the contact was weak. When guys got on, Phelps deftly picked them off. He was very good.

There is a possibility that this was just an off-night for Texas since a Wight (that’s a reanimated corpse for those of you who have not been to Westeros) resembling Derek Lowe came out and dazzled them for the final four innings. But given that Phelps has been effective most of the year, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Ryan Dempster took the ball for Texas. The Yankees and Rangers have both been crushed by pitching injuries and ineffectiveness this year. The Yanks have survived on internal options. The Rangers went out and got Oswalt. Then they got Dempster. I don’t necessarily remember anyone advocating for either of those guys for the Yanks, but certainly Dempster seemed a better option than Freddy Garcia or Hughes and Nova at their worst. Maybe not.

Dempster’s been pretty bad for Texas and the Yanks got to him in the third. I went into the kids’ room for bedtime down 2-0 and as I came out I thought to myself “5-2 Yanks.” Granderson was up with bases loaded and missed a grand slam by about ten feet. The sac fly to center  made the score 5-2. Sorry Curtis, I should have been greedier. I rewound to watch Swisher’s grand slam. Chavez added another homer in the sixth. Both were mature-content homers – Swisher’s never bothered to start descending.

The Yankees took the first game of this four-game series 8-2. Perhaps fans place too much importance on certain regular season match-ups, but it occurs to me that this would be an excellent week to kick some ass. Let’s get to Sunday and look back at Monday as the nail-biter.

Photo via AP/Seth Wenig

Phil Hughes got his tits lit today and the Yanks were getting trashed 10-1. Happens. But they came back before they lost 10-7. Nice effort, got to like this team’s fight but this game will be remembered for Raja Davis’ sensational catch. Robbed a homer Casey McGeheeand will never forget it either.

[Photo Credit: Fred Thornhill/Reuters]

Ivan Nova was good today as the Yanks zipped to a 5-2 on the strength of Casey McGehee’s three-run home run. Here’s the recap by David Waldstein in the Times.

After the game, the team placed C.C. Sabathia on the 15-day DL with a sore elbow. “As for our concern,” said manager Joe Girardi, “it’s pretty low-level.” That takes C.C. out of the Texas and Boston series but Yanks are thinking big picture, of course.

Bummer but sounds like it could have been much worse.

[Photo Credit: Rock the Pixel; Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images]

Freddy Garcia kept the Yankees in the game and then some last night. It helps when you face a team of hacks like the Blue Jays. Took four pitches for Garcia to get through the sixth inning when the game was still 3-2 Yanks. Then a late barrage from the Score Truck, seven runs in the last two innings, and the Yanks cruised to a 10-4 win.

I really don’t know what to say about these Yankees anymore. Deep into the game I was sure this recap was going to be full of doom and gloom. I just knew they’d lose yet another, what would be their third loss in four games in Detroit, and somehow I’d have to put a positive spin on things and convince the Banter faithful that their faith would eventually be rewarded. It turned out none of that would be necessary, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Doug Fister was on the mound for the Tigers. I’m not sure what the numbers are, but it seems like the Yankees tend to struggle against him. In the second inning, though, things were looking good. Eric Chávez sat on first base with two outs when Raúl Ibañez launched a towering fly ball over Quintin Berry’s head in deep left center field, far enough that even the slow-footed Chávez was able to score the game’s first run and the equally challenged Ibañez was able to cruise into third with a triple. Ichiro was up next, and he wasted no time in collecting his daily hit, flicking the second pitch he saw down the left field line for a stand-up double; the Yankees led 2-0.

I must admit that I didn’t have high hopes when Hiroki Kuroda joined the team during the off-season, but he’s quietly become the Yankees’ most dependable pitcher shorter than 6’6″ and weighing less than 290 pounds. Kuroda cruised through the first four innings, nursing that 2-0 lead but looking perfectly comfortable while doing so. Then came the fifth.

Jhonny Peralta hit a booming double to left to open the inning, and a few pitches later Alex Avila laced a home run down the line in right to tie the game at two. These things happen, I suppose, but what happened next usually doesn’t.

Ramón Santiago singled, and with two outs Andy Dirks floated a high fair/foul pop halfway down the line in left. Ibañez was on the case, though, and he hustled in from deep left hoping to make the final out. He came up short, but for a moment it didn’t seem to matter.

Just before the ball dropped, third base umpire Tim Welke threw his arms up, signifying a foul ball. The problem with that is that a split second later the fall ball fell on the chalk, forcing Welke to reverse his call and point correctly into fair territory. Ibañez chased the ball around long enough to allow Barry to score.

Manager Joe Girardi immediately popped out of the dugout and began debating with Welke. His point was that Welke’s initial call — even though it was incorrect — had caused Ibañez to give up on the play, if only for a moment. (For the record, replays did not seem to support this.)

Girardi could be seen to repeat his single claim over and over: “You called the ball foul!” Interestingly enough, Welke admitted as much early in their conversation, saying “I was too quick.” Sometimes an admission like that is enough for a manager, but it only seemed to throw kerosene on Girardi’s fire. He eventually convinced Welke to convene the other three umpires for a conference, but by that point I don’t think there was much that could’ve been done. Had Welke taken away Detroit’s run and pulled Barry back to third, Jim Leyland would probably still be arguing.

When the umpires inevitably held firm, Girardi lost control completely. Fans in the left field bleachers were probably reading his lips easily as he stabbed an index finger into his open palm to illustrate his point: “I’m protesting this game right now!” Welke made note of it and tried to walk away (perhaps because he knew it wasn’t a protestable situation), but Girardi had clearly made up his mind to get himself tossed.

It’s a funny thing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, my emotions run at a fairly even keel, and I almost never get angry. But when I’m coaching a basketball game and an official makes what I perceive to be a bad call and refuses to listen to my argument, everything changes in a Bruce Banner kind of way. If I were to list the ten angriest moments of my life, every single one of them would be the result of an official’s whistle. There’s a feeling that something has been unfairly taken from you in an irrevocable manner, and the feeling of injustice starts in your heart, courses through your veins, and eventually reaches your brain where it drives you insane.

I’ve been in that moment, and that’s where Girardi was on Thursday night. Welke eventually ejected him, but that hardly ended his tirade. He reiterated his protest, fired his hat in disgust, and appeared to make contact with crew chief Bob Davidson (suspension coming?). On his way to the dugout he pantomimed Welke’s error, throwing his hands up in the air, then pointing towards foul territory before pointing back fair. The whole episode lasted just a few seconds short of five minutes, and when Girardi finally turned towards the clubhouse, he paused on the steps long enough to hold his nose while looking in Welke’s direction. He didn’t get what he wanted, but at least he got his money’s worth.

Welke gave his take afterwards: “I started to put my hands up in the air — I was a little quick — then I saw the ball hit the chalk line, and I pointed fair about three times,” Welke said. “I don’t think it had any impact. I’ve watched the replay, and I don’t think there was any impact on the outfielder. I don’t think Ibanez ever even saw me. We got the call right.”

It looked for a while like that was going to be the story of this game. Another creatively painful way for the Yankees to lose.

But in the eighth Mark Teixeira jumped on a 2-0 pitch from reliever Joaquin Benoit and ripped a line drive home run into the stands in right, tying the score at three. Before Benoit could think much about that, Chávez took the very next pitch and lofted a home run of his own over the left field wall, and suddenly the Yankees had the lead again.

Rafael Soriano got the last out of the eighth for the Yanks, then almost threw everything away in the ninth, and it took only three pitches. He gave up a double to Avila to lead things off, then yielded a short single to Omar Infante to put runners on the corners with no one out.

The Yankees surely were hoping to preserve a tie and would’ve been happy just to get to the tenth inning, but somehow Soriano did better than that. He got Santiago to float a soft liner to Canó at second for the first out, induced a pop-up from Berry, then nailed down the third out when Dirks hit a weak fly ball to center. Yankees 4, Tigers 3.

There are questions in Yankeeland, but for one afternoon at least, the answers were adequate.

[Photo Credit: Duane Burleson/AP Photo]

Unpretty.

From In The Loop:

Simon: It’ll be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
Toby: No, it won’t. It’ll be difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult. That is what it will be.

Nothing’s coming easy to the Yankees just now, even when they score 12 runs. So this wasn’t one of your cleaner games, and it didn’t restore massive amounts of confidence — but the bottom line is, they didn’t blow a 7-0 lead. They came as close as you possibly can without actually doing so, but the Tigers never did quite catch up, and New York won 12-8. Of course, just because it could have been much worse, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been better.

CC Sabathia didn’t have the stuff he had Friday night, when I was at the Stadium and watched him pitch a strong, controlled complete game against the Mariners. The Tigers are also not the Mariners, though. That’s a serious lineup that can do a lot of damage if given half a chance, and they got plenty of chances in this one. On top of Detroit’s bloops, dings, and other weird sound effects, the Yankees threw in some errors (Robinson Cano, Casey McGehee) and sloppy play for good measure.

Sabathia made it into the seventh before things started to seriously unravel. He had given up three runs going into the inning, and when he was pulled his line was 6.2 IP, eight hits, five runs — though even here he maintained a sterling ratio of one walk to seven strikeouts. When he left, things became even less raveled under unlucky reliever David Robertson.

But Rafael Soriano continues to be way more reliable than I would have dreamed back when Rivera went down, and the lineup never rested on its laurels. Every Yankee batter had at least one hit; Curtis Granderson knocked in four runs, and Mark Teixeira and Eric Chavez (again!) claimed two each. Anibal Sanchez was cooked after three innings, and the Detroit pen lost the war of attrition.

The Yankees are 64-46, so there’s no need to panic, and never was. They do need to sharpen their game back up, though, or that record — like Tony Janiro post-Jake LaMotta— won’t be pretty no more.

Let’s flip the cliche around. When a team is successful we say “they just find a way to win.” And when they are slumping, I suppose, they find a way to lose, right?

Okay, so Miguel Cabrera hit a home run and a two-run double off of Phil Hughes, that’s to be expected. The Tigers led 4-2. But the fifth and sixth runs, both driven in by Andy Driks (two-out triple against Cody Eppley in the sixth, and then a two out single against Joba Chamberlain in the eighth), were fatal. Because the Yanks rallied against Jose The Long Goodbye Valverde, good enough to close the Tigers lead to one. Russell Martin’s double in the top of the ninth with runners on the corners made it 6-5 but the ball was hit so hard that Ichiro, running from first base, didn’t have a chance to score.

Curtis Granderson, hitless in the first two games of this series, popped up a high fastball for the final out.

Tigers 6, Yankees 5. 

“Oh, that’s so painful,” my wife said. “I feel so bad for Curtis.”

“Fuck Curtis,” I said. Meaning, who cares about the player? Don’t be mad or sad for them, be mad for us. The fans who suffer most.

The Orioles won again, this time in 14 innings and now trail by four-and-a-half games (The O’s have won 12 straight extra inning games).

“There should be a high level of concern,” Eric Chavez said according to Chad Jennings. “Anybody who says that there isn’t is lying. You’ve just got to win ballgames, and we’re not finding a way to do that, and it should be a concern. It’s that time of the year when, yeah, it’s a concern. We need to start playing good and winning games.”

You wonder what will snap the Yanks out of this funk. Something surely will. Let’s just hope it happens soon…

And don’t call me Shirley.

[Photo Credit: Dana Oliver]

No shame in getting smoked by Justin Verlander, now is there?

Nova had nothing. Yanks lose, 7-2.

[Photo Credit: Opcion]

Remember Steve Trachsel? He wasn’t just deliberate when he pitched, he was obstinant like a fuggin mule. Trachsel worked so slowly and on broiling hot summer days like today he managed to piss off just about everyone in the park: his teammates in the field, the opposition, the fans in the stands (and at home), the home announcers.

Throw the damn ball, you just wanted to yell, and often did.

I thought of ol’ Trachsel this afternoon as Freddy Garcia and Hisashi Iwakuma performed the great Snail-Off-Schivtz-a-thon at the Stadium. Okay, Garcia wasn’t quite as soporific but he wasn’t crisp either and didn’t last past five innings. The result was good for napping, perhaps the cure for ansomnia, and little else.

The relievers worked at a quicker pace for which we were all grateful. The good news in all of this was that nobody passed out from heat exhaustion. Better still, the Yanks came away with a 6-2 win.

Hey, they don’t all have to be pretty. The “W” is reward enough.

Ice Cream Sandwiches for everyone.

[Photo Credit: Dessertsforbreakfast]

Here are some excellent things:

Here’s another: King Felix Hernandez.

The Mariners’ ace was dominant at the Stadium this afternoon. Beautiful. Like the old days with Pedro. He out-pitched Hiroki Kuroda–who was excellent–and had Yankee hitters…

…looking this so:

He gave up a couple of hits, walked two, stuck out six and threw 101 pitches.

Game was over in two-and-a-half hours.

Final Score: Mariners 1, Yanks 0.

Consider out hats tipped.

[Images Via: Dave Whitley; Dope Magnitude; A Spoon Full of Sugar; Bron Stadheim; Beach Riot; Fashion Squad; Hel Des; Milica Balubdzic; Elliot Erwitt; Norman Seeff; Meth-Lord; Dan Pickard; Walter Looss Jr.; Koto Bolofo; Lovely Derriere; Uma Cor; Edmondo; observando; Sam Jeibmann; Gene Blevins; Gruesome Twosome]