Bronx, N.Y., June 10, 2011 – I’m as willing as the next guy to deride hideous marketing choices made over the years, such as naming running shoes after the demonic incubus, or an exploding car after a horse. But the Yankee employee who decided that Friday night was a good one to have the team honor their veteran ex-catcher and current DH Jorge Posada by giving out figurines in his likeness before the game “hit a home run,” so to speak, and it may have helped the team as well. After two forgettable months, Posada’s batting average had climbed to .199 before the game, and he singled his first three times up to raise it further.
And they weren’t gratuitous hits in the 11-7 explosion this team certainly needed. The Yanks had already taken a 2-0 lead in the first once Cleveland righty Fausto Carmona walked the bases loaded, first on a Robinson Cano single, then a Nick Swisher sac fly. But with the chance to add to the mayhem with two down and a runner in scoring position, the kind of opportunities Jorge has mostly been squandering, he drilled a single to right center for a 3-0 lead. Feeling his oats in the fifth, the lumbering Posada was out trying to stretch a single to left into a double, but not before, in the third inning, his second single had moved Cano into scoring position, from where he would score on Brett Gardner’s double.
A bruised and battered Yankee team bested a visiting and struggling Cleveland bunch, but perhaps feeling they had bottomed out after completing their second three-game home sweep at the hands of the Red Sox after a 150-minute rain delay Thursday, they beat the Indians in uncharacteristic fashion. The Yankee DH had a good night, true, but so did young No. 5 starter Ivan Nova, who kept the visitors off the board on one hit through the fourth, and left with two runs and just four hits on his ledger through seven innings. The conventional wisdom has it that the affable righty, though talented, can’t get by on his two favorite pitches, a fastball on which he mixes speed and location, and a very effective curve. Perhaps the experts are wrong, or maybe the reeling Indians, still clinging to first place in the AL Central, but just barely, are easy to pitch to now, but Nova dominated them primarily with those two pitches.
Striking out six while walking three and allowing the four hits, his 64/34 strikes/balls ratio was very good, even if he found the zone just 14 times on first pitches before striking out his 28th batter, left fielder Michael Brantley, to close the seventh. Nova was good early and stayed that way.
As was the Yankee offense, something a groaning New York crowd could tell you has not usually been the case this year. It’s not a surprise that their patient bats took advantage of Carmona’s early wildness, nor that Curtis Granderson upped the lead to 4-0 with a bomb to right in the second. What was shocking was that they took the early lead and added to it, almost continuously. Following Posada’s two-out rbi single then Curtis’s bomb with two down in the second, they added single tallies in the fourth and sixth, then seemingly put the game away with a four-run seventh. Mark Teixeira, who had taken the brunt of the Granderson homer when Carmona hit him in the back, and almost the head, with the next pitch, enjoyed this frame, as his three-run double to right center off Chad Durbin opened the lead to a seemingly unsurmountable 10-2.
Posada did not finish as strongly as he started, striking out swinging in both the sixth and seventh innings, but he has the most Yankee hits in the month. And sadly, the Yankee pitching faded as well. When Kevin Whelan, called up from AAA ball this day, took over for Nova to start the eighth, it was the second straight day that a hurler was making his Yankee debut. A residue of the Gary Sheffield trade to Detroit a few years ago, Whelan has struggled with his control until recently, but despite retiring batters around his first walk, he had to be pulled when he forced in a run on three more walks. Amaury Sanit, with four games of experience, struck out two, but four singles and a run batted in knocked him out, paving the way for Lance Pendleton. An eight-game major-league veteran, Pendleton promptly walked in a run on five pitches. A single off Mariano Rivera, who had to appear in a game the Yanks led 11-3 after eight, plated two runs before Mo ended the insanity – and the game – at 11-7 on back-to-back popups.
The plan going forward is that the team continue to receive quality starting pitching, and that their offense take from this victory that the runs need to keep coming all game, not just the first three innings. There will be more rehearsals for key bullpen jobs, both among the youth on the squad now and other pitchers who will be trying their (right or left) hand(s) in the future. Big scores will be needed to cash in wins in some of those games. They won this contest because six Yankees scored; seven of them drove in runs. That’s a game plan for succeess
And their DH figured a way to keep the offensive line moving.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!