Bronx, N.Y., September 2, 2011 – Ivan Nova survived a shaky first inning Friday night with a big helping hand from Brett Gardner. Nova was plenty good all by himself going forward from that point, but was so was Toronto’s Brandon Morrow, so it’s a good thing Gardner continued to be in a helpful mood. Brett’s sixth home run of the year, a two-run shot in the home third, equaled an early Blue Jays lead, and the Yankees took sole possession of first place in the AL East with a 3-2 win in Yankee Stadium.
If anything has sparked Nova’s remarkable resurgence since a brief sojourn playing in AAA Scranton, it’s a darting slider he has added to his fast ball/curve repertoire. The rookie right-hander appeared to not yet have a handle on the pitch in the first inning after starting the game by walking Yunel Escobar on five pitches. Usual right fielder Nick Swisher, spelled in that position this night by Andruw Jones, took over at first base for a banged-up Mark Teixeira and, although Nick made no mistakes fielding the position, it was hard not to wonder if a surer Tex hand might have helped Nova escape early trouble.
Southpaw-swinging left fielder Eric Thames followed the Escobar walk by rebounding from an 0-2 count to single sharply past first base. Holding the runner at first, Swish never moved off the bag as Thames’s hard grounder slashed through three or four feet to his right, settting up first and third with no one out. Baseball home run leader Jose Bautista followed by rolling a much more slowly traveling ground single 12 to 15 feet further from first, a ball that spoiled Yankee fans have seen Tex dive for and stop on multiple occasions. Swish did nothing wrong on either play, but it was quickly 1-0, with no outs and runners on the corners yet again.
That’s where Brett the Jet took over, running hard to his right to snare Adam Lind’s opposite-field liner and turning a probable double into a sac fly. When Edgar Encarnacion followed with a missile even more toward the corner, super Brett soared even further, snatching the rock as he dove, then easily doubling off Bautista, running on the pitch, on a 7-6-3 dp. It’s not certain if first-inning sales of the ubiquitous dipping dots ice cream in the stadium soared thereafter, but I know that frozen treat came to my mind watching Brett tumble to the ground with the ball visibly spinning at the topmost webbing of his glove.
Morrow was very good this night, striking out five in the first three innings, and eight through six; an Eric Chavez walk was all the Yanks could muster in the first two frames. But once Russell Martin also walked leading off the home third, Morrow fell behind Gardner one out later, and Brett lined a 3-1 fastball two rows deep in right center for a 2-2 tie.
A two-out Jones single in the fourth went for naught, but Derek Jeter followed a leadoff Gardner liner to center in the fifth with a clean single, and Curtis Granderson’s walk moved the Yankee Captain into scoring position with Robinson Cano, DH’ing this night, due up. To this point, the usual Yankee second baseman with one of the sweetest line drive swings in the game had struck out swinging twice, but Cano fought off an 0-1 pitch and dumped it into short right to score the last run of the game, and give the home team their winning margin. Swisher struck out for the second time to end that threat, and he would bounce to first with two down in the seventh to deflate a bases-loaded “rally” that consisted of two walks around the second time Jeter reached on an error this game.
Nova, meanwhile, found the “tilt on his slider,” as Joe Torre might have put it, following the first and retired 15 of 16 through the sixth inning around Jeter’s third-inning error, pounding 11 straight first-pitch strikes into the fifth inning. He would allow just one more walk and one more hit following the first, and struck out four through seven. But although Eduardo Nunez would make a nice play on a fielder’s choice grounder in the third, Nova retired nine Blue Jays on fly balls, and his outfielders made some great plays behind him. Following the two fine catches in the first, Gardner ran down another sharp liner in the fifth, as did Curtis Granderson in the sixth. And Andruw Jones in right pulled a Jose Bautista bomb from the right center field wall in the fourth, and made a falling, diving grab of an Escobar tracer to short right in the sixth.
Taking over for Nova, Rafael Soriano pitched around a single in the eighth. The very impressive compliment you could give a Nunez grab and peg from the hole that frame was that he looked like Cano both making the play and the throw. Mariano Rivera threw a one-two-three ninth for his third save in four days, even if Edgar Encarnacion gave the crowd a scare on his deep fly to right that closed out the game.
The superb Nova coninues to improve, and to win games. One hears the chilling (and not totally agreed to) “wins are a team stat” as talking heads discuss his worthinesss for the AL Rookie of the Year award. He has frankly said he’s here to “win games,” and it’s becoming hard to believe that he won’t prevail off his superb 15-4 record, with 11 straight victories.
September 2 has witnessed a lot of great Yankee pitching in the past, and this game marked the 10th anniversary of Mike Mussina’s bid for perfection in Fenway Park in 2001, until Carl Everett singled after 26 outs in a 1-0 Yankee win. Five years earlier David Cone won in his return from aneurysm surgery by throwing seven hitless innings in an eventual one-hit, 5-0 win over the Athletics in the Bronx. Neither Moose nor Coney were original Yanks, but certainly Mel Stottlemyre and Whitey Ford were. Mel beat the Senators 2-1 on six hits on September 2, 1967, and the Chairman of the Board beat the Washington club 4-2 on this day in 1955 while allowing just one hit.
And on September 2, 2011, Ivan Nova has led his team to a return to first place with a 3-2 win over the Blue Jays. He got a liittle help from his offense, even more from some fine glove work. But bottom line,
Ivan Was Not Terrible
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!