Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Can’t O
I’m stealing my title from Keith’s liveblogs. At first yesterday’s game with the Rays was great. Then, it started to suck. Then it was great again. When it was finally over, the Yankees had an 8-7 win over the the Tampa Bay Rays.
Three solo homers by Johnny Damon, Alex Rodriguez and Morgan Ensberg in the first two innings gave the Yankees a quick 3-0 lead. Ian Kennedy gave one run back in the third but the Yankees scored four in the fourth and had a 7-1 lead. Kennedy gave one more run back but got through six with the same 7-2 lead. Kennedy pitched pretty well yesterday, Kennedy threw 94 pitches, 60 for strikes, and got a mix of 10 fly balls, 8 grounders and 3 line drives. He walked just two while fanning four in a very encouraging outing overall. Kennedy took a liner off his hip leading off the seventh and then came the bullpen.
Prior to last night’s game the Yankee bullpen had pitched quite well. They had an overall ERA of 3.09 and had struck out 43 while walking 13 over 46.2 innings. Unfortunately, that must have meant they were due for a bad game and it came last night. Billy Traber relieved Kennedy with three straight lefties due up and a runner on. He got Akinori Iwamura to line out to deep right, then Carl Crawford took him deep to make it a 7-4 game. Traber then hit Carlos Pena and was pulled for Brian Bruney. Bruney gave up back to back homers to B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria (his first MLB homer) and all of a sudden it was 7-7.
In the top of the eighth after Chad Moeller struck out (shocking), Alberto Gonzalez stepped up. Joe Girardi went to his bench for Robinson Cano who had a night off to clear hs head or something. Cano worked the count to 2-1 then hit a moonshot HR that gave the Yanks an 8-7 lead. That would be the last run scored in the game, as Bruney and Mo combined to retire the last six Rays hitters and the Yankees evened their record at 7-7.
After a horrible first start and a middling relief performance, Kennedy’s good start was a breath of fresh air. He’s very likely going to continue to mix in some clunkers but all pitchers do to varying degrees. It was also nice to see Ensberg making the most of what’s been very limited playing time to this point. I don’t think Jason Giambi is completely done despite his low average so far, but I’d like to see Ensberg get a little more time to see what he can provide.
After a painful series in Fenway it was a nice win. I’m still not expecting the Yankees to leave April with a record much better than .500 but I would like to see certain players performing better, like Cano especially. Hopefully last night was the start to one of his hot streaks. Rodriguez also had a good game, going 4-5 with the aforementioned HR, after what’s been a relatively disappointing start to the season.
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