March 2, 2014, Dunedin, Fla. — Lefthander Vidal Nuno was on the mound as the Bombers took their modest two-game winning streak to Dunedin to play the Blue Jays Sunday afternoon, a carbon copy of Saturday, but just a few degrees warmer. And Nuno was pretty much what Yankee fans remembered from 2013: not a lot of straight pitches, lots of strikes, doesn’t throw too hard.

He did run into a bit of a roadblock with Jose Bautista with two down in the first, however. The Jays right fielder hit all three strikes he saw hard; the third one was both fair and long gone. But Nuno notched three K’s in two frames, allowing in addition just a bouncing single to one-time Yankee catcher Dioneer Navarro in the second. All the Yankee pitching was good, even if we hadn’t seen much of it before. Righthanders Bryan Mitchell and Shawn Greene, 23 and 26 respectively, and both on the 40-man, were especially effective following Nuno with two frames apiece. Each allowed three hits, Mitchell struck out three and Greene one, though Greene was reached for the second Jays run on Edgar Encarnacion and Melky Cabrera doubles in the sixth.

By then the Yanks had a 4-1 lead, scored via three singles in the second, and back-to-back Eduardo Nunez and Carlos Beltran homers in the third. The Yanks used two players in each batting position through the game, and the eight hitters who filled the top four spots scored all eight of their runs, drove in six of them, and collected nine of the 14 hits they reached Jays pitching for.

It was great to see Beltran break out, and Nune too, but the early story of this camp is the overwhelming play of some younger players, and some assorted invited parts. Although Yangervis Solarte, Gary Sanchez, Dean Anna, and John Ryan Murphy all continued to contribute big-time in this victory, today’s star was the wonderfully named Adonis Garcia. Not only was Adonis the only Yankee to collect multiple hits — 3-for-4 with a double and two runs scored — he came up with one of the two key defensive plays in the game, along with a peg by Austin Romine, who easily threw Jose Reyes out stealing in the first. The former Met had reached when Russ Canzler failed to handle Nunez’s throw from short, tagging the shortstop with an error, but Reyes was not on base when Bautista went yard.

Jays second baseman Ryan Goins, the only guy who played all nine innings, led off the bottom of the third with a single, and Reyes followed by slashing a mean low liner down the line in right; it seemed a sure double. But right fielder Garcia sped to the corner, made a lunging grab, and recovered to double Goins off first. This preserved the 4-1 lead, and sent Mitchell on his way to two solid frames. Garcia also scored the first Yankee run after leading off the second with a single, and his two-out single in the fifth led to a bases-loaded threat that cost two Jays relievers 30 pitches to escape.

Joe Girardi has adopted a strange approach for his second- and third-tier players this Spring, favoring versatility over specialization. Thus, 2013 second base prospect Jose Pirela has played left field twice thus far, then took over at third today, forcing third sacker Zelous Wheeler out to left field. Solarte has played short, third, then second, and short again today. And Garcia, exclusively a center fielder last year, played third on Tuesday, and right field ever since. So far, it’s paying off.

The final score was forged by reaching the number 8 by scoring 4 runs late exactly the way it had been done earlier: an Anna rbi single for one in the second, 3 on homers in the third. Garcia doubled leading off the seventh for his third hit, Sanchez’s single got him to third, and a Corban Joseph rbi grounder made it 5-2. Then in the eighth, Antone Richardson and Solarte singles set the table, and a first-pitch, no-doubt-about-it Murphy bomb to left made it 8-2. The Yanks won the game by scoring two bunches of runs, each good for four runs.

In the parlance of roulette, they scored eight “the hard way.”

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!