Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Winning Ugly
It wasn’t pretty, but the Yankees managed to take the last game of their four game set with Cleveland last night, 5-2. Mike Mussina pitched well although he was only able to last through five innings. I’m pretty happy with how Moose is pitching this year, although I have to be honest that I don’t know how he’s doing it.
The Yankees didn’t get a hit until the sixth inning, then came the weakest rally ever.
Yankees sixth. Cabrera infield single to third. Jeter infield single to third, Cabrera to second. Abreu singled to left, Cabrera to third, Jeter to second. Rodriguez was hit by a pitch, Cabrera scored, Jeter to third, Abreu to second. Giambi grounded out, first baseman Garko unassisted, Jeter scored, Abreu to third, Rodriguez to second. Matsui grounded out, first baseman Garko unassisted, Abreu scored, Rodriguez to third. Lewis pitching. Ensberg infield single to third, Rodriguez scored. Cano grounded out, pitcher Lewis to second baseman Carroll to first baseman Garko.
That turned out to be enough, as the Yankee pen pitched four scoreless to back up Moose and the Yankee offense added an insurance run in the 8th for the final margin of victory.
At this point, let’s look back at the April Expectations post. Using log5 and the projected winning percentages of the Yankees and their opponents, we see that at this point in the season we should have expected the Yankees to be 15.4 - 11.6. They’re 14-13 instead, so they underperformed by about 1.4 wins. All things considered with injuries and individual players disappointing, that’s not too bad in my opinon.
Alex Rodriguez looks to be out for at least the next two games after re-aggravating his quad injury.
Yanks finally come home after playing more April road games than any team in baseball history to take on the Detroit Tigers, who started out 0-7 but have gone 11-8 since.
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