There are a lot of words that come to mind when trying to describe what I just witnessed for the last two and a half hours. I’ll start with the pleasantries and build to the darker matters, because I like to lead with the good and finish with the bad, for no reason in particular.
It was a great pitchers’ duel, something I did not expect in the least if the Yankees were going to end up losing. To me, this was the type of game with a lopsided Yankees loss written all over it, more so than a gritty, nail-biting heartbreaker decided in the final inning. But Darrell Rasner outperformed any sane person’s expectations and threw an absolute gem. He got through 6.2 innings giving up only 3 hits and 1 run and departed with the game tied at 1, hoping his team would scratch something across against A.J. Burnett or the Jays’ bullpen.
Okay, so…other good news from this game:...
…..Hideki Matsui came back?
Where to begin on the negatives. Might as well start in inning #1: I figured that Johnny Damon’s defense would hurt the team when the merry-go-round on the basepaths began, and runners were going from 1st to 3rd and scoring from 2nd on singles to center. I did not worry about Johnny’s ability to catch the ball when hit his way. After all, he played center for his entire career leading up to this year. But in the first inning, he dropped a routine fly ball hit by Alex Rios that put runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out. Rasner amazingly got out of the jam, but the Yankees had just taken a lead on Burnett and gave their back of the rotation starter some breathing room. To immediately force him to unnecessarily work that hard in the 1st inning was a sure-fire bad sign.
From there on, it was the A.J. Burnett vs. Darrell Rasner Show. It is hard to tell the difference between the Yankees offense struggling and the opposing pitcher being on top of his game. Regardless, for some reason the rest of the league has been able to get to A.J. Burnett. The Yankees, however, can not touch the guy. Jason Giambi, A-Rod, Johnny Damon, they all looked completely overmatched in their at-bats against Burnett. Giambi has been particularly dreadful regardless of his grand slam against Kansas City. He got 1 hit in that entire series, which happened to be that homer, and tonight he struck out a whopping 4 times, including twice with runners in scoring position.
To be shut down again and again by one pitcher makes me question the Yankees’ hitters ability to adjust and determination to overcome adversity. Those are two things that this year’s team seems to completely lack. If a pitcher is said to “have their number” this year, he keeps that number and exploits the team’s hitters again and again. You can look to Josh Beckett, Burnett, Oliver Perez, and Daniel Cabrera for good examples of this. Yet, only one of those guys is what you would call a legitimate “ace” pitcher (Beckett).
Adversity, well that has sunk the Yankees’ chances in many games this year. Unless they are in complete control of a game this year, it has been near impossible for the team to suck it up and fight back, or deal with any random things that go wrong in the course of 9 innings or more.
Johnny Damon dropping an unfathomable second fly ball in the bottom of the 8th inning, costing his team a run, is some serious adversity. How does the team respond in the top of the 9th? By having a leadoff single by A-Rod turn into a 3-6 put-out while Alex was trying to turn a single into a double. The play was made by an outstanding Overbay hustle effort, but Alex could have played it safe and remained at first knowing that it meant the tying run would be on and some good hitters (allegedly) were following him.
Then again, Jason Giambi is no longer a “good hitter” following A-Rod. He predictably recorded his 4th strikeout, this one at least against B.J. Ryan (a night of pitchers with abbreviated first names for Toronto). The thinking is that A-Rod was trying to get something started in the 9th, and I understand that and fault him less than bring the play up to point out how everything possible has gone wrong this year for the Yankees. But you wouldn’t be so adamant about trying to get to 2nd base to lead off if you had more faith in the guy hitting behind you. That’s not to say that A-Rod thought that as he ran towards second, but the sense of urgency would be there because of the #5 man’s struggles.
All in all, a disaster. I am ready to give up hopes of the team finding a way to get red hot and make it into the playoffs, just because it seems as though this group of players can not find any magic to get them anywhere near hot. Playing decent baseball and winning the final games in Yankee Stadium will be enough at this point.
To put a cherry on top of a terribly disappointing night, this story about Carl Pavano pops up. It is completely mind-boggling that as soon as he becomes discussed as a possible option for the Yankees’ pitching staff, he again comes up with an injury. A stiff neck? A stiff neck is going to keep a pitcher who has been out for almost 2 full years from making his potential return to the major leagues? I’m going to probably be the first person writing about baseball to do this, but I’m going to have to go ahead and question Carl Pavano’s fire and desire to pitch for the Yankees.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Games 125-127
at Toronto Blue Jays
Pitching Match-ups
Tonight, Tuesday August 19
Darrell Rasner (5-9, 5.18) vs. A.J. Burnett (15-9, 4.67)
Wednesday, August 20
Andy Pettitte (12-9, 4.30) vs. David Purcey (2-3, 5.93)
Thursday, August 21
Sidney Ponson (7-3, 4.20) vs. Roy Halladay (14-9, 2.64)
Prognostications
Toronto features its two best starters in this series, who have both dominated the Yankees in their starts against them this season. The third guy, David Purcey, is a soft-tossing left hander that the Yankees have never faced before, which has meant that the offense got shut down and the guy had a career game, regardless of how bad his ERA was coming in. Looking at just the pitchers, you assume the Yankees are going to have a tough time in this series.
Then there is the fact that Toronto is red hot as a team, coming off a sweep of Boston in Fenway and a 3 out of 4 game swing through Detroit earlier last week. Alex Rios has been killing the ball, and he is a perpetual thorn in the Yankees’ side. Vernon Wells returned and has swung the bat well, and he too has a strong career track record of clobbering Yankees pitching.
And then you have the Yankees, puttering along after a terrible road trip and a mediocre yet effective enough 3-game homestand against Kansas City. Pessimism envelops the Yankees at this point based on the difficulty of their schedule and the depth of the hole they’ve dug themselves. The feeling is that they will finish behind Tampa and Boston, and could even finish behind Toronto considering the teams are now only separated by 2 games in the standings, and that could swing Toronto’s way by the end of the night on Thursday.
A.J. Burnett is 2-0 this year against the Yankees and has overpowering stuff, Halladay absolutely dominated them for a CG shutout the last time he faced their lineup, and they’ve never seen Purcey so he’s due for his best game in the majors. All this seems to add up to the Yankees being lucky to win one of the three games, with the potential for a Blue Jays sweep as evident as ever.
Do I believe any of this doom and gloom, and do I admit that this 2008 Yankees season will go out with a whimper in Toronto in late August?
No I don’t, not for one second. It’s all about the Yankees’ offense, and what a lot of people are saying is: “If the team hasn’t been able to hit for the first 124 games, why will they suddenly flip a switch and start now?”
I can’t answer that question directly, but I will say that it shouldn’t be a matter of flipping some type of hypothetical switch. The team has been putting itself in positions to succeed offensively all year long. If they begin to build up some consistency in delivering in those potentially productive situations starting tonight and carrying through the rest of this week, and actually win some tough games and show some resiliency and some determination, then it won’t be a matter of “the light bulb has gone on, the switch has been flipped”. It will be a team playing like a team, a team of highly talented individuals figuring out how it works to feed off each other and collaborate to win baseball games. Something that they were great at for the last 2 years they were together, but have inexplicably forgotten how to do this year.
I say that, considering the reputations and abilities of the players taking the field for the Yankees, it is not impossible that they will start playing winning baseball again. No, their offense will not reach those storied heights that pundits expected them to reach, there will be no 1,000 run season. But to say the offense can’t do enough to win games in the major leagues, to me, is silly.
Granted, it will be difficult to take these types of steps if the pitching struggles, which puts a lot of pressure on the shaky Darrell Rasner tonight. But winning this evening’s first game, no matter how ugly it is or what kind of effort it takes, would do a lot for this team. It means beating someone they haven’t been able to solve all year, and it means beginning to make the case that “Oh yeah, rest of the American League, we are the Yankees and we still do have all these big-name players. So maybe we’re not completely out of the race, just yet.”
I personally think tonight will go a long way towards deciding if the pennant race happens in New York this September or not. This is the type of game that needs to swing the Yankees’ way, because it simply has not all year long. I don’t know how it will happen or if it will actually happen, but I am certainly optimistic that it will. Call me crazy, call me unrealistic, call me a pinstripe glasses-wearing buffoon, but I think it is possible.
NOTE: Hideki Matsui has been activated from the 15-day disabled list. Justin Christian was optioned to Triple-A Scranton to open up the roster space for Godzilla. Japan's power hitter is in the lineup tonight, batting 7th and DHing.
