Bronx, N.Y., July 17, 2012 – I had to scratch my head a bit once Blue Jays southpaw Brett Cecil delivered his first pitch in Yankee Stadium Tuesday night. Posted as “Changeup, 83 mph,” it has always intrigued me when a pitcher starts his night’s work with a change. By definition, the pitch is supposed to fool batters by being a “change” from what they would expect. But if your first pitch is a change, it’s a change from what?
Yankee fans already had good news before Cecil’s offering to Derek Jeter missed the zone. Three weeks from his last start before being DL’d, Yankee lefty CC Sabathia came out very well in the first, striking out one each on his fastball and his slider in a one-two-three inning. Starting Rajai Davis with 90 mph heat, CC built that to 93 and 94 mph in no time, and his slider drifted all around the 80 mph mark. When Sabathia mixed in a change, it was a true alteration from those two very good pitches.
CC was solid, even if it was startling to see this true rotation horse out of the game after six innings and 87 throws. The Yanks, with an almost double digit division lead, are taking no chances bringing him back. He carried the team to a championship in 2009, and the Yanks hope he does so again this year. While in there, the Yankee vet allowed four hits, one walk and no runs. He struck out six, threw 16 first-pitch strikes to 23 batters, and compiled a superb 66/21 strikes/balls ratio. Once he pitched around an Edgar Encarnacion (two doubles for the second straight night) two-base hit leading off the second inning, you got a good feeling about CC, a feeling that did not dissipate.
Cecil, meanwhile, was surprisingly effective in his change-dominated six-inning outing, holding the powerful Yanks to six hits and one home run while in there. He struck out five and walked two, and kept his team in the game. But he had a problem. Lefty-hitting MVP candidate Robinson Cano extended his hitting streak to 20 games when he lined a one-base hit to center leading off the bottom of the second on an 0-2 pitch. Nick Swisher, who took strike three with the bases loaded twice on Monday night, reached on ball four two times in this game, the first following the Cano hit.
That brought Andruw Jones up with two on and no one out. The righthanded half of the veteran left field platoon the Yanks have been utilizing in place of the injured Brett Gardner, Andruw Jones is a dangerous batter against a a light-throwing lefty. With Cecil’s fastball topping out at 88, the Toronto lefty needed to find three ways to “change,” or surprise (fool), Jones before the Yankee free swinger hit a ball hard. Cecil got a called strike, then coaxed a weak foul, while missing twice, 2-2. But when Jones drilled pitch No. five five rows deep in left, the Yanks had grabbed a 3-0 lead and, given their starter’s effectiveness, the game.
The Yanks would threaten Cecil with two base runners just one more time, but the 3-0 lead stood. The home team failed to score Jayson Nix following the Jones homer, or Mark Teixeira with one down in the third, though each had doubled, and would only tack on a three-spot in the seventh once Cecil was lifted. The Yankee pen, in particular Chad Qualls, struggled as well, losing the shutout after a leadoff Jeff Mathis double in the eighth, and needing help to close the ninth once Encarnacion stroked his second double leading off that frame.
Stats. What would we do without them? At the least they get us thinking about probable outcomes in a given head-to-head contest. But such confrontations reflect past results; in a game largely about failure, it often pays to think about strengths, weaknesses, and matchups. Andruw Jones had gone 0-for-8 against Brett Cecil before Tuesday’s second inning, and went 0-for-2 against him later in the game.
But a deeper look showed that the Jays lefty did not have the killer pitch to retire the Yankee veteran. When he tried to get a third strike past Andruw,
Jones Beaned Cecil
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!