August 6th Vs. The Red Sox
Not much went the Yankees way after the Teixeira homer. Cervelli booted an easy pop up which lead to multiple unearned runs, the Yankees couldn’t hit with men in scoring position, and then the Red Sox bullpen shut the door.
Not sure what to make of Vazquez’s night. On the one hand, he did still let the runs score after the Cervelli error despite them being unearned. Yet, he seemed to have recovered after that to pitch pretty well up until the the Red Sox rookie Kalish’s first home run. I saw some things that I liked from Vazquez, such as how good his change-up was. The problem was that he started to over use the change-up after Ortiz absolutely crushed a fastball. He did crack out a few Vicente Padilla-esque curve balls against Adrian Beltre that made him look silly. Beltre’s swings were of the Loony Tunes helicopter variety.
Except for the broken bat single, everytime the Red Sox put the bat on Kerry Wood’s offering, they hit it hard last night. The balls just happened to find gloves. As long as Girardi uses Wood in Chan Ho Park situations, I’m fine with it. I wouldn’t put him in the game with the game on the line, however. You can’ discount his ability to miss bats, but you also have to factor in the fact that when he does get hit, he gets hit hard.
As far as the offense goes, Tex continued his power surge with a 2 run homer, his 4th in the last 6 games. Berkman continued to struggle as a Yankee (although he did get robbed of a hit by an outstanding play but Ellsbury). Cano had another multi-hit game, his 41st of the year. Hopefully Cano is about to go on another tear as he had been 1 for his last 15 prior to this game. All of his knocks were hard hit.
I know A-Rod is Kevin Long’s most notable student (he is on the cover of his dvd after all) but I think he’s done his best work with Nick Swisher. Swisher is having without a doubt his best season in the bigs. And I think you can credit his new (new for his career) swing. When it’s all said and done, I believe Swisher will get a few MVP votes this year. The Yankees wouldn’t be where they are without him.
An interesting email that I got from one of my Yankees fan friends today:
Gotta say, I see his point.
Steve Lombardi wrote:
Isn’t Youk out for the year?
Hey, it was his email, not mine.
They aren’t “getting players back”.
It’s “player”, at this point, an outstanding one named Pedroia.
I’ve never, ever counted the Red Sox out. They can roll behind their pitching, even with Youkillis out.
I’ll say again what I said from early in the year. This Yankee team is good enough to win 95+ games. Whether that’s good enough to make the playoffs this year, I don’t know.
According to Lohud Yankees, A-Rod got hit by a batted ball during today’s BP and was helped off the field… not good.
Zach wrote:
Yeah, he’s out of the lineup for today, at least. If he’s put on the DL, the Yanks might actually try Laird in the heat of a playoff chase.
If calling up Laird were a chess move, it would have the notation ?! at the end of it.
Zach wrote:
Berkman finally hits one hard, and it’s off of Rodriguez’s knee… Having said that, he should’ve been paying attention