Results tagged ‘ Fausto Carmona ’
Umps taking notice of too many HBPs
Awareness of Yankees batters becoming target practice for opposing pitchers has finally reached the umpires. Plate ump Dan Iassogna did not hesitate to eject Indians righthander Mitch Talbot from Saturday’s game in the sixth inning after the righthander plugged Alex Rodriguez in the left hip with an 88-mph fastball.
As Rodriguez fell to the ground in the batter’s box, Iassogna sprung from behind the plate and tossed Talbot. The umpire clearly felt there was intent on Talbot’s part. After all, Rodriguez had homered off Talbot in the fourth inning. Friday night, A-Rod hit a monster shot estimated at 450 feet into the left-center bleachers.
“I don’t know if it was on purpose.” Rodriguez said after the game. “I was in too much pain. It got me just above the quad.”
The Yanks and Indians nearly came to blows Friday night two innings before Alex’s titanic blow when Mark Teixeira was drilled in the right shoulder blade by a fastball from Fausto Carmona right after Curtis Granderson had homered. In the previous series at Yankee Stadium, Red Sox pitchers hit Yankees batters six times in three games. Obviously, umpires read the boxscores.
Iassogna said, “After the situation we had [Friday] night, and Alex hit a big home run and hit another home run [Saturday], and Curtis Granderson hit a home run [Friday night] and another one [Saturday], [Talbot] threw the pitch directly at [Rodriguez].”
“Our guys hit a lot of home runs, and a lot of people don’t like that,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “But we’ll protect our own.”
Nevertheless, it’s not a bad idea for umpires to do a little policing, too.
Tempers as hot as Yanks’ bats
The fireworks so many people were expecting from the Yankees during the Red Sox series when batters were dodging pitches every night came to pass in the second inning Friday night against the Indians. As usual, there were more exchanges of words than fists, but the crowd at Yankee Stadium got a kick out of it.
At issue was a fastball from Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona that struck Mark Teixeira in the right shoulder blade. That the pitch came right after Curtis Granderson had homered into the second deck in right field made Tex believe it was more than a coincidence. The first baseman, who was knocked out of a game in the Red Sox series by a pitch that struck him in his right kneecap, responded with some choice words to Carmona while walking to first base. Carmona moved toward Teixeia and mouthed back to him, which resulted in both benches and bullpens emptying.
Tempers were about all that flared. The hottest exchange was between managers. The Yankees’ Joe Girardi and the Indians’ Manny Acta got right into each other’s faces. Lip-readers must have had a field day determining which skipper was more x-rated in their tirades.
If the fans expected any payback from Ivan Nova, they might have been disappointed but should not have been. Granderson’s home run, his 19th, made the score 4-0. The Yankees were wise not to wake up the Indians, who are clinging by a thread to their small lead in the American League Central after having lost 11 of their past 15 games.
Carmona hurt himself more than Teixeira in the first inning by hot throwing strikes. He walked three of the first four batters. All three eventually scored. Brett Gardner doubled in a run in the third, and Alex Rodriguez powered his 625th career home run in the left field bleachers right next to Monument Park in the fourth.
Carmona did not come out for the fifth and remained winless in seven starts since May 3. That was the Yankees’ payback to him.
Go figure
Trying to figure out baseball will drive you nuts. Or drive you broke if you gamble on games. One night after the Yankees could do next to nothing against a pitcher making his major-league debut, they faced the Indians pitcher who represented the franchise in the All-Star Game two weeks ago and knocked him out of the game in the third inning.
The Yankees made Tribe rookie Josh Tomlin look like Bob Feller Tuesday night by scratching for merely one run and three hits in losing to a pitcher starting his first game in the majors for the sixth time in the past seven such occasions. They turned that around Wednesday night and made Fausto Carmona look like Herm Feller (the late Red Sox public address announcer, the only other person named Feller I know) by unloading on him for seven runs and 10 hits in 2 2/3 innings.
Yankees fans surely remember Carmona. In Game 2 of the 2007 American League Division Series, the infamous game in which a swarm of midges surrounded the infield at Progressive Field, Carmona held the Yankees to one run and three hits in nine innings. Joba Chamberlain, then a rookie, was attacked by the midges in the eighth and gave up the tying run on a wild pitch, his second of the inning. The Indians won in the 11th and went on to take the series in four games.
Carmona entered play Wednesday night on a three-game winning streak with a 2.41 ERA over 18 2/3 innings that improved his record to 10-7, impressive for a club playing .420 ball for the season. Big deal, the Yankees bats said.
Alex Rodriguez set the tone in the first inning, not with his 600th career home run but with a two-out, RBI single that got the Yankees on the board quickly. They followed that with a small-ball second inning in which four singles and a stolen base added up to three runs. Extra-base power showed up in the third – doubles by Robinson Cano and Brett Gardner and a triple by Curtis Granderson – an inning that Carmona could not survive.
After Cano opened the fourth with a home run (No. 19) off reliever Hector Ambriz, Jorge Posada singled, which left Derek Jeter as the only Yankees regular without a hit. Posada was back in the lineup one night after missing a game due to a sore left knee. It turns out that Jorgie has a cyst behind the knee as the result of years of squatting behind the plate, which may reduce even more his time as a catcher, although Posada says that he has been treating the ailment for the past four years.
Posada has already had health issues this year with foot and shoulder injuries. It’s tough to be a catcher at age 38.
Jack O'Connell
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