The Orioles beat the Red Sox tonight and Baltimore is now tied with the Yankees for first place with four games left in the regular season.
Maybe the Yankees won’t play like chokers tomorrow. Maybe they will still win the division, after all. It won’t be easy–they’ve been killing us softly for six weeks now–but they are our boys and we’ll be rooting for them, agita or not.
[Photo Credit: Pug King]
I had a root canal this afternoon and can safely say it was a more pleasant experience than today’s Yankee game. The Bombers scored twice in the first and then left 632 men on base, got guys picked off and thrown out trying to steal on the way to a 3-2 loss to the Blue Jays that is their worst defeat of the season. And there have been plenty of tough ones. But in a game they needed to have their season-long problem of hitting with runners in scoring position bit them the in the ass, knuts, and face. Did I mention it bit them in the balls? Right. How do you think it felt for us watching at home?
You got any silver linings, feel free to chime in.
They’ll be tied for first after the Orioles spank the Red Sox tonight. And you can take that to the bank.
It’s Andy and another haveta, gotta win.
Derek Jeter DH
Ichiro Suzuki LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher 1B
Curtis Granderson CF
Andruw Jones RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C
Never mind nuthin’: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
The Yanks scored a couple of two out runs in the first inning on a double by Nick Swisher. Might have been more but Curtis Granderson’s line drive was snagged by the pitcher Chad Jenkins. Actually, the ball hit his mitt and the glove popped straight up in the air. He caught the mitt with the ball stuck in the webbing, good for one of those I’ve-never-seen-that-before moments.
Down in Baltimore the Red Sox scored a run in the first inning, too. In the second, the Yankees loaded the bases and managed just a single run. Meanwhile, the Orioles scored six in the bottom of the first.
The Blue Jays were sloppy, got a runner nailed off second base in the first inning, another picked off third an inning later. They hung around and closed the score to 3-1. In the sixth, the Yanks put the first two men on base then Curtis Granderson and Raul Ibanez whiffed. Looked like another wasted opportunity. But Russell Martin worked the count full and then yanked a 3-2 slider over the wall in left for a homer.
Bombers didn’t look back. Martin, Cano, Swisher, and Ichiro each had a couple of hits. Eric Chavez hit a homer. Rafael Soriano came in to get the final out on the count of he hadn’t pitched in a week. Brett Gardner played left field in the ninth inning. Hiroki gets his 15th win of the season.
Final Score: Yanks 11, Jays 4.
O’s cruised too so nothing’s changed. Yanks still ahead by one.
[Photo Credit: food addict]
The Yankees have a one-game lead over the Orioles with six games left. Tonight gives Hiroki.
Derek Jeter SS
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher 1B
Curtis Granderson CF
Raul Ibanez LF
Russell Martin C
Eric Chavez DH
Never mind the closed-door meetings: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: Zeroing]
Photo: AP
The Yankees took a break from the chaotic American League playoff race with a leisurely 5-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. In a game played with as much intensity and crowd interest as you’d expect in the early Spring, the Yankees frittered away an opportunity to take a two game lead in the A.L. East.
Considering the lopsided pitching matchup, the Yankees seemed to be playing from behind before the first pitch. Unfortunately, Ivan Nova did little to dispel that impression. The right hander allowed a two-run homer in the third and two-run double in fifth, which not only put his team behind 4-0, but also set a new franchise record for most extra bases hits allowed in a season. The 87 extra base hits allowed by Nova surpassed Andy Hawkins’ previous record of 86, which was set in 1989. Needless to say, that’s not the kind of anchor the Yankees were hoping Nova would become.
To be fair, it probably wouldn’t have mattered whom the Yankees pitched because Brandon Morrow continued his string of dominance over the Bronx Bombers in Toronto by throwing seven shutout innings. In five career starts against the Yankees at Rogers Centre, the hard throwing righty is now 3-0 with a 1.04 ERA in 34 2/3 innings. Maybe by throwing Nova to the wolf, there was a method to Girardi’s madness after all?
Although Morrow was efficient, he wasn’t overpowering. In fact, the Yankees had a base runner in every inning but the second, but could never break through against the right hander. For the most part, Morrow seemed to bear down with runners on base, but in the fourth inning, he needed a great running catch by left fielder Anthony Gose to escape unscathed. Otherwise, it was lackluster performance by the Yankee bats, who were shutout for the sixth time this season.
With a one game lead and six remaining, the conclusion to this season promises to be memorable. Unfortunately, a very forgettable game got in the way. Then again, if the Yankees lose the division by that game, it could be the one that haunts them.
It’s Ivan Nova vs. a tough customer in Brandon Morrow. I always get bad vibes when the Yanks play in Toronto and with so much riding on this series that hasn’t changed. Sure as hell hope I’m wrong.
Derek Jeter SS
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher 1B
Curtis Granderson CF
Russell Martin C
Raul Ibanez LF
Jayson Nix 3B
Another day, another important game. The Orioles are off. Yanks win, they go up by two games; lose, it’s down to one with six left.
Never mind the fretting: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: APOD]
Over at ESPN, Jorge Arangure, Jr. profiles Rafael Soriano. And here is a piece Daniel Barbarisi wrote on Soriano in July.
[Photo Credit: Mike Stobe/Getty Images]
The Yanks washed away last night’s loss with a swift ass-whippin’ of the Twins this afternoon. They scored six runs in the third inning, highlighted by a bases loaded double from Robinson Cano and a two-run triple by Curtis Granderson. Chris Dickerson later jacked a two-run bomb well over the high wall in right field. CC did his thing, allowing just a couple of runs over eight innings. Cody Eppley pitched a scoreless ninth and the Yanks head to Toronto sporting a two-game lead over the Orioles.
Final Score: Yanks 8, Twins 2.
Today was a good day.
[Photo Credit: SP Photos; Hannah Foslien/Getty Images]
CC and nothing fancy, boys: Just win.
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Derek Jeter SS
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher 1B
Curtis Granderson CF
Eric Chavez 3B
Raul Ibanez DH
Chris Stewart C
Chris Dickerson LF
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Film is God; Andy Brannan]
The Yankees weren’t hitting much but Phil Hughes was cruising through the Twins’ line-up. The Orioles had lost to the Blue Jays by the time Russell Martin hit a lead off home run in the seventh inning giving the Yanks a 3-1 lead. It was difficult not to start thinking ahead, calculating, fantasizing, but that was the last moment of pleasure for the Yankees on this night.
Hughes had a low pitch count but loaded the bases in the bottom of the inning. Still, he got two men out before he was pulled in place of Boone Logan despite having handled the batter Denard Span all night. Logan threw the first pitch in the dirt. It got away from Martin and a run scored. Span then dumped a fly ball into center, good for a double and Joe Mauer followed that with a single and just like that, the Twins were ahead 5-3. Logan’s sliders were flat and that, as they say, was that.
Well, almost. Andruw Jones, who hasn’t had a hit since Christ was a Cowboy, cranked a solo home run with two outs in the ninth. But Jayson Nix whiffed to end the game, end of report, good night.
Final Score: Twins 5, Yanks 4.
You want to nominate this one for worst loss of the year, go right ahead. Other games have been more brutal but given the circumstances, a chance to take a two-and-a-half game lead on the Orioles, and this one really smarts.
The Orioles have the day off tomorrow. It’ll be CC to try and push the Yankees’ lead to two. If they lose, it’s down to one game with seven left.
[Featured Image Via It’s a Long Season]
There are nine games left in the season and nothing is resolved. The Yanks could win the AL East or they could miss the playoffs entirely.
It’s one-day-at-a-time and today gives Phil Hughes.
Never mind the prognosticating: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: C.F. B.]
Cool piece in the Times by Dave Waldstein on Ichiro:
During a game for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan in 1999, Ichiro Suzuki struck out and returned to the dugout unusually frustrated. In a fit of anger, he destroyed his black Mizuno bat. Embarrassed, Suzuki wrote a letter of apology to the craftsman who had made his bats by hand from Tamo wood, grown on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Such was the respect that Suzuki felt for the process that created the bats, which he wielded with such skill.
Today, after a decade in the major leagues, Suzuki still displays that same reverence on a daily basis, caring for his bats like Stradivarius violins. While most players dump their bats in cylindrical canvas bags when they are not using them, Suzuki neatly stacks his best eight bats inside a shockproof, moisture-free black case that he keeps close by his locker at home and on the road.
“He dresses like a rock star and he carries his bats around in a case like a rock musician with a guitar,” Yankees pitcher Boone Logan said. “It fits his style perfectly.”
[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]
During his post game interview following his second start back from the disabled list in Minnesota on Monday night, Andy Pettitte shook his head and laughed. “I’m definitely a work in progress,” he admitted. If you missed the game and just caught that self-deprecating response, you might’ve assumed Pettitte had struggled, something like four runs in five innings and maybe a loss. Not quite.
Pettitte threw 88 pitches over six strong innings, allowing just seven hits and a walk while striking out three. He didn’t allow a run.
Looking at those numbers on the morning after, Pettitte looks brilliant, but he struggled in the first inning. He gave up consecutive singles to open the game, walked Josh Willingham to load the bases with one out, and momentarily fell behind the dangerous Justin Morneau. But he did what we’re used to seeing from Andy Pettitte, what we saw as far back as Game 5 of the 1996 World Series. He battled. He eventually retired Morneau with a 91-MPH fastball dotted on the outside corner, then induced a ground ball from Ryan Doumit to end the inning. It had taken 22 pitches, but he had escaped.
That first inning had been tenuous, but Pettitte had actually been working with a 3-0 lead. Derek Jeter had opened the top of the first with a walk, then raced around to third on a double from the blistering hot Ichiro. Robinson Canó brought one run home with a ground out to short, but then Nick Swisher crushed a ball off the facing of the upper deck in right center field for a muscle-flexing homer and a three-run Yankee cushion. As it turned out, that would be all that Pettitte would need.
Even so, Curtis Granderson gave him another run in the fourth as he rocketed his fortieth homer high into the right field stands. Granderson has become a disturbingly one-dimensional hitter this season, but as frustrating as his all-or-nothing approach can be, it’s hard to criticize a guy who’s hit forty home runs in consecutive seasons, a feat accomplished by only four other players in the long and homer-filled history of the Bronx Bombers. There was Jason Giambi in ’02-’03, and then the three usual suspects: Mickey Mantle (’60-’61), Lou Gehrig (’30-’31), and a guy named Babe Ruth (’20-’21, ’23-’24, ’26-’32). Is it just me, or is it kind of shocking that Alex Rodríguez isn’t on that list?
Pettitte, meanwhile, was straight dealing. After that shaky start, he set down the side in order in the second, used a double play ball to to escape a two-hit inning in the third, watched as Granderson and Russell Martin combined for a phenomenal play to throw out Doumit at the plate to end the fourth, yielded a harmless single in the fifth, then set down three straight in the sixth to finish his scoreless evening. Pettitte just might be the best September call-up in Yankee history, and he definitely looks ready to assume his usual spot starting Game 3 in the playoffs.
Raúl Ibañez and Eric Chávez added solo home runs in the frame after Pettitte’s departure, giving the Yanks a 6-0 lead in the seventh inning and enough of a cushion that the rest of the game seemed unnecessary. There were really just two things of note: things got a bit messy for the bullpen as they yielded three runs in the final two innings, and Derek Jeter singled with one out in the ninth to keep his hitting streak alive at 18 straight games.
At this point in the season, any win makes for a good day, but this 6-3 win meant more than just a half game in the standings. Pettitte has thrown eleven shutout innings since his return from the disabled list, and suddenly the Yankee rotation of Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, and Hughes looks ready to carry the team through these final nine games and into the playoffs. The Yankees won’t clinch the American League East until the weekend, but I think we’ll look back on this game and realize this was the night it was won.
[Photo Credit: Jim Mone/AP Photo]
Yeah, the Twins aren’t all that but they’re enough to have swept a double-header from the Tigers yesterday. No sleeping allowed.
It’s old man Andy in his second start since returning from the disabled list.
Never mind the standings: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: TS Flynn via It’s a Long Season]
Head on over to Deadspin and check out Alan Siegel’s funny story about Sparky Lyle and the birth of entrance music for closers:
“The organization probably wasn’t ready for a rock song,” [Marty] Appel said. One of his friends was the son of David Carey, a studio musician who’d toured with Frank Sinatra. Appel described a typical Lyle entrance to the elder Carey and asked for advice. Carey recommended Sir Edgar Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”
The graduation march—known to ’80s and ’90s WWF fans as dearly departed “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s theme—was the kind of triumphant accompaniment Appel was looking for. And so, 40 years ago, the era of entrance music began.
When Yankees manager Ralph Houk signaled to the bullpen late in games, Appel would use binoculars to determine who was getting into the Datsun. Then, from the press box, he’d call organist Toby Wright’s direct phone line. If Appel said, “It’s Lyle,” Wright would slowly begin playing “Pomp and Circumstance.”
“As soon as the car pulled through the gate, the place started to get it,” Appel said. “It worked almost from day one.”
The A’s played another sloppy game in the field today but Hiroki Kuroda had a bad outing and while the Yankee bullpen picked him up, the bats did not. Boy, Kuroda was disappointing but a familiar theme did the Yanks in as they just couldn’t get hits with men on base. In the ninth, Alex Rodriguez missed a game-tying home run by two feet and Robinson Cano fouled off a hanging slider that had second deck written all over it.
In the end, the A’s survived and won 5-4. A blown opportunity for the Yanks (and an enormous win for the A’s) as the Orioles finally lost in Boston, 2-1. But in a way, the outcome was fitting with the way things have gone with the Orioles. It’d be unfair if either team took more than a one game lead.
This thing is going to try our nerves until the final days of the season.
Eh, forget about it, folks. It’s still a beautiful day. Go out, stretch those legs, have something good to eat. This was a good weekend, as aggravating as today’s game was.
Come back in the morning. We’ll be here.
[Photo Credit: Elevatedencouragement ]
Another good pitching match-up at the Stadium on a sunny but crisp day in New York. Our man Hiroki’s on the hill.
(And from ESPN, here’s an update on Mark Teixeira.)
1. Jeter SS
2. Suzuki LF
3. A-Rod 3B
4. Cano 2B
5. Swisher 1B
6. Granderson CF
7. Martin C
8. Ibanez RF
9. Nunez SS
Never mind the team in the rear view mirror: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: The Absolute Best Photography Posts]
You know, it’d be easy for us to curse those Baltimore Orioles who have won six-in-a-row and who seem to have forgotten how to lose in extra innings. However, I wonder how the Orioles–and their fans–felt last night, after having won, after seeing that the A’s went ahead by four runs in extras against the Yanks only to have the Yanks pull it out.
With more than a little bit of luck.
Reading this description by Zach Schonbrun in the Times makes me wish I’d been there:
When the game seemed over, Ichiro Suzuki led off the bottom of the 13th inning with an infield single. A misty rain had begun to fall, like the soft spray in a carwash. The low sun through the clouds covered the stadium in a strange orange glow.
The game had started just after 1 p.m., before the long September shadows had started their slow march across the infield, but by the 13th, the stadium lights were on, and the scoreboard shined, and the game took on a surreal feel.
What a wild game it was. Did I mention Steve Pearce’s diving catch? And Raul Ibanez, not only with the two homers but a hustle double that brought Paul O’Neill to mind and a tough collision at home plate to boot.
Course the O’s could win again today, Yanks could lose and we’d end the weekend on a down note. But let’s face it, this is some good shit.
