Multiple Signs of Life, Even in Death

Three important little baby steps last night for pivotal Yankees in this 2008 season. We'll start with the only one that occurred outside of The Bronx.

Ian Kennedy's line in his first start at AAA Scranton: 7.1 IP 1 H 0 R 0 BB 8 K. A drastic turnaround from Ian's putrid performances in pinstripes thus far this year. The quality of the Charlotte Knights lineup he decimated may be less than what an American League opponent can offer, but he needed to see that he could still pitch to a high level somewhere. He wasn't going to get this type of sudden boost of confidence pitching in New York, where only slight improvement would have still left questions swirling about his status in the rotation. Now, though, he shifts the pressure onto Kei Igawa and Darrell Rasner this upcoming weekend. He gets to rest until Sunday, and gets to know that if either of those two falters in Motown, he could pitch his way back into the Bombers' rotation.

The likelihood of one or both of the newly-added starters faltering this weekend seems high, especially considering the track record of Kei Igawa. That allows Kennedy to put the pressure on himself to perform well in his next start on Sunday, knowing that it might get him a ticket back to New York for a start next week. I honestly trust Kennedy performing under the self-implied pressure of trying to pitch his way back to NY, more then I trust Igawa and Rasner both performing well under the real pressure of being in the Yankees rotation and facing a great lineup.

Even though the Yankees lost last night's game in crushing fashion, two big things to take away from it were key hits by Jason Giambi and Robinson Cano. The more shocking to me was seeing Giambi drive in runs with a hit to left field. Who knows if he'll be able to build off that, but seeing that he actually got a semi-important hit for once is enough success for one day. Cano has had little spurts of productivity during his slump (his home run Sunday, last night's hit), so the key for him seems to be just putting together a legit slump-busting hot streak.

For a night they no longer could be categorized as certified corpses in the middle of the Yankees' lineup. Neither could Andy Pettitte be faulted on this night, as he turned in an excellent performance, keeping the starting pitching momentum going into tonight when Wang matches up with the surprisingly unhittable Cliff Lee. The lefty will probably mean Shelley Duncan and Morgan Ensberg both in the lineup, meaning more nearly-automatic outs at the bottom of the order.

There's no need to spend too much time deliberating over Joba Chamberlain's failure last night. He's due to have some games where he gets beat, and last night was one of them. It's a story because he rarely slips, but it won't snowball into a concern because he's got too good of an arm and too strong of a psyche to let it.

I'll be real interested to see how tonight's game goes, though, and if Cliff Lee can really keep his unreal season going.