Bronx, N.Y., June 3, 2009 — The Yankees fell 4-2 to the Texas Rangers in Yankee Stadium Wednesday night, as the home team returned the honor of the American League’s best record that they had just wrested from Texas the night before. Young Scott Feldman outpitched veteran Andy Pettitte, but the second biggest upset to anyone in a rain-soaked Bronx an hour before first pitch is that they played at all.
The biggest upset? That this one came in at an even three hours. Pettitte got a strike call on an 88-mph fastball to Ian Kinsler at 7:17, but that was the last quick thing to happen while Texas batted for the next four innings. More than his younger and perhaps more imposing fellow starters in the Yankee rotation, Andy is the one guy who can battle through some tough innings, even when he has nothing. Wednesday was that night.
After the strike call, Kinsler walked and Michael Young struck out, but three singles and a walk around a hot shot fielder’s choice to short had the visitors up 3-0. Melky Cabrera mercifully ended the frame by pegging out Marlon Byrd from right field when he tried to go first to third on Chris Davis’s rbi single for the third run. The Yanks responded with a run on a Nick Swisher one-out double and Alex Rodriguez’s two-out hard single to left, but the Rangers got that run back on three singles in the top of the second.
And 4-1 is the way it stood into the seventh. In the interim, Rodriguez failed twice in key situations, bouncing into a 5-5-3 dp once Feldman walked the bases full in the third, and striking out swinging with Johnny Damon standing on third in the sixth. Damon had reached first on an Elvis Andrus error, and then third when Feldman threw the ball away on a pickoff attempt. It’s important to realize that both threats were built without a Yankee hit, because the Texas righty largely shut down New York’s vaunted offense for most of the game. The only Yankee to reach base aside from those three walks was a Jorge Posada single in the second, and that was removed on a double play bouncer to the box.
Posada struck again, finally, leading off the seventh with a home run around the right field foul pole on a 2-0 pitch, and Feldman left two batters later when Cabrera reached on an infield single. This was a close play at first that umpire Brian Knight was ready to [apparently incorrectly] call “out” until Davis couldn’t handle the throw. Knight also called Robbie Cano out at first in the fourth, one of two fine plays Texas phenom at short Andrus made on the Yankee second baseman, though this one too seemed the wrong call. But it hardly mattered.
While Feldman put the Yankee offense, and crowd, to sleep, Pettitte persevered through inning after painful inning. The first and second frames had cost him 47 pitches along with the four early runs. A leadoff walk and single in the third spelled trouble, but Andy roared back with three straight swinging strike outs, at a cost of 20 more throws. Not to be outdone even in wildness by Feldman, Pettitte walked the base loaded himself in the top of the fourth; he wrestled free, but now his count was 95. An uncharacteristic (on this night, anyway) nine-pitch fifth put a wrap on his night.
Brett Tomko threw three fames on 39 pitches, and David Robertson pitched the ninth, while southpaw C.J. Wilson and closer Frank Francisco made short work of the Yanks once Feldman left. The game came in at exactly three hours, but almost two-thirds of it was consumed in the first four frames. Feldman kept the Yanks off balance while Pettitte labored to hold Texas down. He threw just 12 of 26 first-pitch strikes, and 45 of his 104 pitches missed the zone. He struck out six, yes, but he walked that same number; add in the seven hits and no wonder it seemed the Rangers always had someone on base.
Baseball is a weird game, and the pitcher who throws the best does not always come away the winner. In this one, the Rangers jumped the Yankee starter for three first-inning runs, and the home offense would plate just two all game. But it was painfully close to not happening that way at all. After the Kinsler walk and the Young strike out, Andruw Jones’s single to left center had sent Kinsler to third. On a 2-2 pitch to Nelson Cruz, Jones broke for second, and Cano did the same. Cruz smacked a grounder up the middle that would have found a waiting Cano with time to step on second and fire to first for a double play, with no runs scoring. Would have! Unfortunately, Pettitte made a desperate stab for Cruz’s shot, it glanced off his glove, and rolled troward the second-case position that Cano had just abandoned. Barring that carom off of Andy, it could have been inning over with no runs, rather than 3-0, Rangers.
If anything, Andy deserves kudos for keeping his team in this one despite all those pitches and baserunners. Two starts ago, the Yankees southpaw received a no-decision in a come-from-behind win against the Phillies, a game where he also gave up four runs, on just five hits and two walks; he lasted seven innings in that one. Of course, two of the hits were big ones, home runs, including a three-run blast that became John Mayberry Jr.’s first major league home run. It was a proud moment for Mayberry’s father, I’m sure, perhaps even more so because he played part of a season at the end of his career for New York in old Yankee Stadium.
There wasn’t much chance for the Rangers, the team that leads the league in home runs, to inflict that kind of sudden damage in the new Stadium Wednesday night. Andy finished his night in the fifth, retiring the last two batters to face him on a comebacker and a popup to first. This followed a six-pitch battle with center fielder Byrd, who was retired when Brett Gradner ran down his long drive to right center on the warning track. It was the first and only fly ball against Pettitte all night.
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!