Winning Ugly
August 29, 2010 – 11:20 amNYY 12, Chicago 9. This one was certainly an ugly game, but I guess at this point you take the wins anyway you can. Lots of less than encouraging news though — hopefully CC Sabathia isn’t catching A.J. disease like everyone else in the starting rotation seems to be, as he got roughed up for 5 runs on 9 hits in 7 innings. Now that’s the first bad start he’s had since back in May, so I’m going to call that a fluke and not worry about it. But then the bullpen, the one shining constant for the Yankees over the last couple of months, also got roughed up pretty good. Joba Chamberlain, Boone Logan, and David Robertson all got hit hard, giving up a combined 4 runs on 6 hits while recording all of 3 outs. Again, they’ve all been rock solid for some time now, so hopefully that’s just a fluke as well. Even Mariano Rivera, who ended up having to come in for the save, put two runners on to bring the tying run to the plate. Sheez — overall some pretty bad pitching.
In spite of putting up 12 runs on 14 hits, there was also cause for concern with the offense. Mark Teixeira went out in the third inning with a bruised hand — supposedly he’ll be back in the lineup today, but isn’t that how Alex Rodriquez’ current stint on the DL started out? Losing Tex at this point could be disastrous. Beyond that though, lots of stuff to smile about. Robbie Cano may be getting back in his groove, going 3-for-5, and ditto for Jorge Posada who had two key doubles. Then there’s Marcus Thames, who went 2-for-5 with 3 RBIs, including two home runs, giving him four homers in the last four games. I know this guy is supposed to be a platoon player who has trouble hitting righties, but hey — over the month of August he’s got a .380 BA and 1.135 OPS. I say give him the permanent DH spot until he cools off regardless of who is on the mound.
But the real offensive surprise was Eduardo Nunez, who went 3-for-4 with 4 RBIs including a 2-run homer in the second. At one point Nunez was one of the top prospects in the organization, but over the last couple of years he has struggled some in the minors. Sure would be nice to see him all of a sudden start living up to those earlier prognostications. A-Rod is scheduled to be back shortly, but if Nunez can swing a hot bat off the bench, he sure would be more valuable than Ramiro Pena in that position.
Photo: NY Daily News
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NYY 10, Seattle 0. CC Sabathia and Robinson Cano both made great cases today for why they might be deserving of post-season awards, like the CY Young and MVP. CC has become Mr. Automatic over the last three months, as you have to go all the way back to May 29 to find a start where he gave up more than three runs. Since then his record is 13-2 with just one no decision, and the Yankees over that period are 14-2 in his starts. Sunday he totally shut down the Mariners on just 3 hits while striking out eight — although to be fair, it took a phantom call at home when Jorge Posada clearly missed tagging out Franklin Gutierrez to keep CC’s shutout in order. And credit the bullpen for yet another good performance, with Kerry Wood and Joba Chamberlain putting the finishing touches on the combined shutout
NYY 9, Seattle 5. Javier Vazquez played a game of “whatever you can do bad I can do worse” with A.J. Burnett, and Javier won handily, giving up 4 runs in just 3 innings to the weak hitting Mariners. At least with A.J. we know very well what to expect and not to expect. With Vazquez, though, you just never know. He started the season terrible, then recovered and pitched rather well for a while, but now he’s back to pitching like he did earlier, perhaps even worse. Where he’s headed is anyone’s guess. With an off-day looming ahead next Thursday, one would hope that at least they will skip his turn in the rotation, and maybe that will help? At the same time, I sure would like to see them start stretching out someone else to pick up the slack — like maybe Chad Gaudin, who looked pretty good today, going 3 scoreless innings and giving up just one hit while striking out three.
And not to be overlooked was a very good outing by Phil Hughes — the proverbial “quality start”, going six innings and giving up just 2 runs on 4 hits. And those two runs came on a Miguel Cabrera home run, so that’s certainly excusable as Cabrera is one of the better power hitters in the league, and is really on a tear right now. It was also nice to see Hughes get six Ks, as he seems to been having problems finishing off hitters his last couple of starts. One can easily see Hughes finishing the season as the No. 2 starter in the rotation, so having him pitching like this is more than a little important. Of course there’s this whole innings limit thing going on in the background…. it’s going to be interesting to see how the Yankees deal with that in the post-season if in fact he really is the No. 2 at that time.
