Yanks get Royal treatment

As the Yanks fell 1-0 to the Royals on Sunday, their magic number remained at 45 as the Rays edged the Orioles 3-2. However, the lead in the AL East has been trimmed to one game. The blame for this one lies solely on the offense, as the team produced more errors (3) than hits (2). The two hits tied a season low and it was the sixth time this season they were shut out.

AJ settled down after a shaky first and went eight innings and gave up the one run on four hits with six strikeouts to three walks. Remember this game the next time he goes six innings and gives up five or six runs and gets the win. Pitcher wins/losses are the fucking dumbest stat ever.

Fun fact: over AJ’s last two starts, opponents are 8-for-23 with runners on base.

Girardi on AJ:

"I feel he’s going to give us a good start every time he goes out."

Bryan Bullington earned his first major league win as he shut the Yanks down to the tune of two hits over eight innings with five punch outs to one walk. “Cy”an Bullington faced one more batter than the minimum and failed to let a Yankee into scoring position. Fuck. Me.

To (literally) add injury to insult, Lance Berkman is now day-to-day with a jammed right ankle after stepping on Bullington’s foot in a play at first base.

In other news: I’ve said this before recently and I’ll say it again, Francisco Cervelli has got to go. I’ve been the biggest fan of his ever since I attended that game last year when he had the walk off single against the Blue Jays (the one on September 17 right after the brawl with Posada), but he owns a .468 OPS since May 25th. That’s not cool. In addition, he did a half-assed job of covering first base today and then botched the throw to second to allow the runner to go to third (though he was stranded there). The time has come to call up Jesus Montero, I know he’s young but he can’t do much worse than Frankie. It’s time to see what he has.

How do you split a four-game set with the Royals?

Ugh, what a shitty afternoon. The less said about this game the better.

Oh well, you can’t win ’em all. The Yanks will head home for a four-game set with the Tigers starting on Monday. In other words: Johnny Damon’s first trip to the Bronx since leaving for “more money.” Javy will be going against Max Scherzer in the opener.

Here are some postgame quotes from Girardi:

"You give up two hits after the first inning and one run and you lose the ballgame. We didn’t score any runs…I think (AJ) found his command and was able to make a lot of pitches, and throw his fastball when he wanted, curveball when he wanted. He did everything he needed to do to win the game…I don’t question the approach (on offense). I thought we hit some balls really hard in the beginning. He shut us down and that’s a game we needed to win, it’s unfortunate. You  look for the ball and hit it, that’s the bottom line. We have a lot of good hitters in our lineup…It’s not what we wanted and we need to play better. We need to go home and play well. Tying series is not good enough, we need to win series."

Girardi on A-Rod:

"Everyone acts like he’s hitting .220 with 38 RBI. I mean he’s on pace to drive in about 140 runs. So I’m not complaining about the season he’s had. I’d be more concerned if he didn’t have the RBI, but because he has the RBI and he’s produced in those situations it’s a less of a concern for me."