Archive for May, 2011

Bartolo Colon stole the show with his first complete game (an absolute gem BTW) since 7/5/06 and the Yankees’ first complete game shutout since 5/8/09 (CC), but the second biggest story of the win was Tex and his ability to mash taters. Marky Mark now has four homers in five games, seven in the last 11 games and 16 on the year, which ties him with Grandy for the team lead. In addition, he has a seven game hitting streak over which he’s hitting .310 (9-for-29) with four homers, nine RBI, four walks and four strikeouts. Also, 11 of his [...]

As I predicted on Friday, the Yankees struggled in Seattle, but still found a way to avoid the sweep with another dominating performance from CC Sabathia. Now, New York will start three more games on their West Coast trip with the Oakland Athletics. A’s general manager Billy Beane has used homegrown pitchers to build this rotation into one of the best in the American League, but do they have the bats to give this team more wins? The Athletics have gone through a schism in their clubhouse recently with reliever Brian Fuentes criticizing manager Bob Geren for his usage in [...]

The Yankees salvaged the finale of their three-game set with the Mariners via a 7-1 beatdown. The team used a five-run third inning to put the game out of reach. Every Yankee starter had at least one hit while CC was in complete beast mode. Victory was imperative today following two heartbreakers on Friday and Saturday. The win came on the 16th anniversary of Derek Jeter’s big league debut, which, ironically, also came in Seattle at the Kingdome. Since that 0-for-5 showing, Jeter has compiled, among many other accolades, 2,980 hits and 1,406 regular season wins — the most of [...]

  Go West, Old Yankees! That is where New York is heading for nine games after a 4-2 homestand. The first stop on the West Coast trip is the Seattle Mariners. Before the season began, you might have looked at this matchup and wondered if Felix Hernandez was going to be a Yankee or close to it by then. Well, Hernandez will be pitching against the Bombers on Saturday and Seattle is right in the thick of things in the AL West. Even though the bats just are not there for the Mariners, their arms are there and it starts [...]

Despite being in first place, the Yankees have dealt with subpar performances by some players in their lineup, most notably Nick Swisher. Swisher is off to a dreadful start batting .208 with 2 home runs and 19 RBIs through 48 games. Those numbers projected over the entire season would give him 7 home runs and 64 RBIs. Swisher’s downfall began last post season as he batted .091 with 1 home run and 1 RBI. Swisher’s poor play was a major reason why the Yankees were knocked out of the ALCS by Texas. It was very shocking to see him play [...]

The Yanks claimed pitcher Kanekoa Texeira off waivers from the Royals today in a move that sent Phil Hughes to the 60-day disabled list. Fake Tex doesn’t have overwhelming numbers in his 67 2/3 career innings, in fact they kind of suck, but it seems this is more of a depth move. In other injury news, So will be sidelined for about eight weeks. The elbow injury — which was diagnosed as an inflamed elbow ligament by Dr. James Andrews — will require two weeks of rest before a conservative throwing program can begin. Then the righty will embark on [...]

Behind a solid outing from Fabulous Freddy and an offensive explosion, the Yanks took the rubber match of their set with the Blue Jays, 7-3. Garcia (3-4) went 6 1/3 innings and gave up three runs on eight hits with three strikeouts and no walks. He saw his ERA rise slightly from 3.12 to 3.26, but he did exactly what the Yanks needed him to do. D-Rob came in and finished off the seventh inning before Joba tossed a one-hit eighth and Mo followed suit in the ninth. It was the 1,000th appearance for Mo, the first player to ever [...]

After going 0-for-5 with RISP early on, the Yanks strung together a late-innings rally and stole the game from the Jays, 5-4. They scored two runs in each of the eighth and ninth innings and finished 4-for-10 with RISP. They really should have lost this one, but a win is a win and I’ll take it. If not for Granderson they probably don’t win (not to mention CC, but more on that later). Grandy sparked the eighth-inning rally with a leadoff double, moved to third on a Tex groundout and eventually scored when Cano doubled. Cano came around on a [...]

Besides a homer to Bautista in the first, Colon was cruising along until the sixth inning tonight. That’s where it all came undone in a 7-3 setback to Toronto. I’ve never been a huge fan of intentional walks, sometimes they’re a smart play, but two in one inning is just ridiculous. Colon IBBed Bautista and Juan Rivera, and then added an unintentional bases-loaded walk to Eric Thames (no relation) in that monstrosity of an inning. It was ugly…five-run ugly. If only he could face Baltimore every start. Oh well, what can you do? It was really only his second clunker [...]

After the Yankees took 2 of 3 from the city rival New York Mets, another AL East team who the Yankees have fared well against comes to town for a three game series. The Toronto Blue Jays (23-23) are 2-3 against the Bombers this year, but the $64,000 question is how many home runs will OF Jose Bautista hit in this series? Bautista is shocking the entire baseball world with 18 home runs and a .353 average on the season along with an astonishing nine home runs in his last thirteen games! Other than Bautista, there is not really much [...]