Bronx, N.Y., May 14, 2013 — First base was a place of some strange doings in Yankee Stadium Tuesday night. In the top of the second, Lyle Overbay’s decision to toss ex-Yank Raul Ibanez’s weak ground ball to a tardy CC Sabathia at the bag got the Seattle DH a cheap hit and pushed Michael Morse to third. The Mariners did not score due to one of Sabathia’s 10 strike outs then, but they would take a 1-0 lead the following inning when Overbay booted a Michael Saunders one out before Kyle Seager’s rbi double to right.

The visitors had trouble at first too, with a bad catcher throw after a strike-three wild pitch putting Chris Nelson on second with no outs in the third. And Hernandez obstructing Overbay on a 4-3 throw in the fourth also put the Yanks in business. In both cases, the Seattle ace pitched his way out of trouble, but he was knocked down in the latter, the first of two tweaks afield he would experience that may have contributed to his leaving the game after having thrown 96 pitches through six innings. Two errors for the M’s, one for the Yanks, but only the home team miscue led to a run. But to the extent the tweaks got Hernandez out of the game (he would also slip when throwing Robinson Cano out at second on Curtis Granderson’s bouncer to the box two frames later), Seattle suffered the bigger loss.

The Yankees returned from a 6-2 road trip Tuesday, falling in shutouts in both losses, only to find themselves lined up to face “King Felix” Hernandez and the Mariners Tuesday. Although the team is on a roll, those two stats diid not stack up well in their favor. A shutout victim a week ago, Yankee ace Sabathia was perched and ready to do battle, and battle he did, holding the Mariners to two earned runs (three runs overall) into the seventh inning. Down 1-0 to an unearned run, Ibanez reached him for a two-run poke in the top of the sixth, but Overbay closed the gap with an rbi double in bottom half, the only run off Hernandez. But when CC was reached for a 10th hit and second walk with one down in the seventh, Joe Girardi was forced to replace him, with slider slinger Shawn Kelley. Kelley had struck out six of seven Royals batters Friday night, and his key punch-out of Kelly Shoppach helped get the Yanks up in the bottom half just two runs down.

Hard-throwing Yoervis Medina came out for the seventh, but Chris Nelson reached him for his second single of the night before Austin Romine struck out, as Nelson was wild pitched to second. With four lefties around Vernon Wells due up, manager Eric Wedge replaced Medina with southpaw Charlie Furbush. Brett Gardner battled to a six-pitch walk, and Robinson Cano tied the game with a double off the right center field wall, a ball the Yankee second baseman clearly thought was going out, though his delay running did not cost him a base. The ensuing walk to Wells was intentional, but the next one to Granderson was not; it loaded the bases. And more than making up for his troubles in the field, Overbay produced the go-ahead run by lining a sac fly to center. Dividing the four Yankee rbi’s equally with Cano, Lyle’s troubles at first were easily forgotten.

Although the 2013 Yankees seem to enjoy winning by one run, they had the smallest of edges, and two frames to go. Illustrating my point, David Robertson emerged from the pen and promptly walked pinch hitter Dustin Ackley on four pitches. He also fell behind Brendan Ryan, who bunted a 2-1 pitch in front of the plate, but Romine gambled and threw to second, late. D-Rob recovered by striking out Saunders, and a pinch hitting Justin Smoak hit a soft liner to short; Jayson Nix made the catch and doubled Ackley off the bag. Even with Enter Sandman coming, no one in the crowd was disappointed that Mariano Rivera’s 11-pitch, one-two-three ninth inning offered considerably less drama.

That made Mo 16-for-16 in saves to start the young season, a league-leading number for Rivera, and one of a slew of numbers issuing forth from this big win. The third-place Red Sox, who were up 3-0 early; and the second-place Orioles, who went to the ninth up a run with their closer on the mound, both lost, moving the Yankee division lead to three and two games, respectfully. The Yanks are now 25-14 on the young season, have a plus-26 run differential in those games, and have now gone 8-2 in one-run games, 5-1 at home.

May 14 has been a big day in Yankee history; Mickey Mantle hit his 500th home run on this day in 1967, and as the Yanks’ historic 1996 season was just taking form, Doc Gooden shut out this Mariners team on May 14, holding them to no hits that day. This day would also have been the 327th birthday of Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, inventor of the thermometer after whom one of our systems of temperature recording is named.

It was a cool night in the Bronx, but the team numbers weren’t the only hot ones being displayed Tuesday night. Although CC’s gutsy effort was two outs short of earning him a win, and the 10 hits he allowed did not come close to approaching Gooden’s results 17 years ago, he did strike out 10. His 23-9 first-pitch strikes number was impressive, and the 75/37 strikes/balls ratio matched the 2/1 spread pitchers want, and pitching coaches harangue them about. Sabathia used low-nineties fastballs, sliders about 10 mph slower, and a killer change to get 19 swings and misses.

The Scoreboard offered a unique stat as CC was pitching the first inning, that since his major league debut in 2001, he had thrown 49,894 pitches. The 112 tosses Tuesday night, then, mean that in the top of the seventh, he passed a pretty impressive number: 50,000 major league pitches.

Now that’s a hot number.

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!