Yankees Bombs Hail Over Pittsburgh: Drub The Pirates 11-5

The Yankees didn’t need an effective start from the rotation last night, but they got some of it anyway. All they needed was thirteen hits with a splash of four doubles and three home runs to put away the Pirates at PNC Field 11-5.

The Yankees now have five regulars hitting .300 or better in their lineup. And that doesn’t include Ronald Torreyes, who had four hits last night to raise his average to .296. Not does it include Aaron Judge, who is hitting .281, which for pitchers must feel like .581 with the power threat his bat represents.

One of those five, however, is Aaron Hicks, who, while not officially yet, is the Yankees left fielder, replacing the odd man out, Brett Gardner. And if the team needs, even more, offense, Joe Girardi must be thinking about replacing Greg Bird, who continues to look lost at the plate and is managing only one hit every nine times he bats (.111), with Chris Carter, who hit a three-run shot last night as a pinch-hitter.

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In short, Brian Cashman has crafted a team that is built around offense and when they get decent pitching, as they did last night from Michael Pineda who, while managing only five innings, gave up three runs on two mistakes that went for home runs, keeping his team with a chance to win.

An extra inning or two from Pineda would have been icing on the cake as the bullpen needed to finish out the final four innings, but you take what you can get sometimes.

The Yankees (11-6) faced a pretty good Pirates (7-10) pitcher in Jameson Taillon last night and did not put the game away until they scored ten runs in the final four innings after Taillon had left the game.

What’s Up With Girardi Though?

In a mysterious move, Pineda was removed from the game by Girardi after throwing only 79 pitches, and that forced the bullpen to throw an additional 70 pitches to close out the game. Curiously though, no one asked him about it in post-game interviews.

Although it’s hard to fault anything Girardi does these days, this is something that bears watching, even today when Jordan Montgomery makes the start. Girardi has a well-deserved reputation for his reliance on his bullpen in days when a four-inning 100-pitch start from a guy like Pineda was typical.

Video Courtesy of the YES Network

Usually, Pineda, who clearly did not have his best stuff, would have been urged to gut it out giving the team an extra twenty pitches, making it at least through the sixth, and possibly into the seventh inning.

Seemingly, this would have been a good lesson for Pineda to learn in what is still a “growing-up” process in his maturity as a full-fledged major league pitcher.

Turning The Page

The rubber game of the three-game set with the Pirates will take place at 1:35 P.M. EST. Jordan Montgomery (1-0 4.22) gets the start facing Ivan Nova (1-2 2.25).

Then, the Yankees get a day off on Monday before they travel to meet the Red Sox at Fenway Park for their first of 19 games this season on Tuesday night.

Yankees Have A Winning Formula No Team Can Copy

The Yankees can think of ways to win in baseball that no one else has ever thought of, like when Miller Huggins told Babe Ruth to invent the home run.

Tentatively, the pitching matchups for the Red Sox series have the Yankees with Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, and CC Sabathia in order, while the Sox counter with Rick Porcello, Chris Sale, and Drew Pomeranz.

Tanaka vs. Sale figures to be a must-see game and ESPN currently has it set for a national audience Wednesday night.