Bronx, N.Y., May 25, 2007 — Battling through a rough stretch of games in big series their fans want them to sweep, the Yanks seem to have adopted a strategy that if they can win series, they can turn their season around. If they are to win this weekend series vs. the Angels, they’ll have to do it in comeback fashion after falling 10-6 Friday night.
The club got more than they could have hoped for from Tylar Clippard’s major-league debut in a win in Shea Stadium Sunday night. Start two didn’t quite measure up, leaving Yankee Manager Joe Torre with a tough decision to make. Having recently emerged from an almost team-wide offensive malaise, Yankee bats were showing signs that they could get to Anaheim righty Jered Weaver. This was a game, Joe realized, that the Yanks could win.
Torre is often criticized for staying with his pitchers too long. He is also viewed as a man comfortable with veterans, and rookie-averse. With young Clippard having yielded three runs through four frames, something had to give. It seemed certain that either Joe would stay with his starter less than two weeks from the minors, or he would pull him in favor of a vet. But there was a third alternative, and Joe replaced his rookie with yet another rookie. Two innings later a 3-2 deficit had become 10-3, and despite one late offensive rally, this game was already lost.
Clippard allowed individual runs in the first and second in almost identical fashion, surrendering one-out back-to-back doubles. Each time, the first batter scored, and the second died on third. He notched his lone strike out in a 1-2-3 third inning, but was reached for a home run, then single starting off the fourth. The Yanks had closed the gap to 2-1 on an A-Rod home run to right center in the third. They did so again on a Doug Mientkiewicz single to short right in the fourth, narrowing Anaheim’s lead to 3-2.
It took Clippard 76 pitches to get those first 12 outs, but Weaver was being extended too, and he threw 81 over the same span. Rookie Tyler was reached for six hits through four, five of them extra-base hits, but he allowed no walks, and threw 10 of 18 first-pitch strikes. He got five outs each on ground balls and outfield flies. He forced a popup along with the strike out, but he couldn’t consistently control his low nineties fasrball and got very little help from a mid-seventies curve or his 80-mph change.
Given that performance, Torre’s surprising decision to pull Clippard after four seems defensible. At least it does until you view it through the prism of what happened next. Fellow rookie righthander Matt DeSalvo came out for the fifth. Would that Joe would have reacted as decisively to the deficiencies immediately apparent in his pitching. DeSalvo not only showed nothing, he couldn’t find the plate with his no-bite pitches. He fell behind both Chone Figgins and Orlando Cabrera 3-0 to start, eventually walking each. Where Clippard’s hard stuff sometimes found too much of the plate, DeSalvo’s missed it altogether. He threw one pitch that rolled to the screen with no one on, then another after the Figgins walk for a wild pitch.
With two on, Vlad Guerrero singled hard to right center for a run. Gary Mathews, Jr. battled DeSalvo through eight tosses before doubling into the right field corner for yet another. Joe had seen enough, but the Yankee chances for a win took a bigger hit during those four at bats than it had during the first four innings that Clippard had fashioned.
Harvested in the trade that sent Randy Johnson to Arizona, veteran Luis Vizcaino has struggled all year, but he escaped that inning well despite walking in a run for a 6-2 Angels lead. Posada doubled in Jeter in the bottom of the fifth, but the Yankee catcher was out by a mile when Jason Giambi singled the other way to left. But despite the DeSalvo meltdown you had the feeling the home team could still win this game. Or at least that feeling persisted until Mr. Vizcaino started the top of the sixth by himself.
Young outfielder Tommy Murphy singled to start if off, and then Vizcaino reverted to DeSalvo form. He threw two off the plate to the badly struggling Figgins, who turned and blasted the 2-0 pitch over the wall in right center for an 8-3 lead. Four straight batters had reached to start the fifth against DeSalvo. Luis equalled him by waking Cabrera and allowing a booming double to Guerrero. This was the Angels’ sixth double, and Yankee outfielders were either poorly positioned or too slow much of the night. On at least four of them it appeared an outfielder had a chance for the catch before the ball barely eluded him. The night was tough on center fielder Damon in particular, and he left the game wih thigh cramps, giving way to Melky Cabrera.
Ron Villone relieved Vizcaino, and effectively, but by the time the smoke cleared, it was 10-3, and the Yanks were in emergency mode. They mounted a three-run rally in the eighth, scoring them all on a Robbie Cano double to left center. Mike Myers closed the eighth and Scott Proctor the ninth, but the Yanks lost the opener and now need to scramble.
The teasing words of Country Music Star Kenny Rogers’s 1978 hit “The Gambler” say you need to know “when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” This was one night where Mr. Torre pulled a guy who allowed six hits, no walks and three runs over four frames, but appeared to have something left. Then he called for two relievers, who each allowed their first four batters to reach. Once two more innings were complete, the Angels had walked five times, and had added six hits and seven runs.
But Saturday we start with a fresh deck, and Torre gets to pull an ace and place it on the mound. Let’s hope Mr. Wang makes us all look good and sets up a rubber game for Sunday.
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!