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Anyone expecting a head-hunting mission in the Yankees-Red Sox game Wednesday night was sorely mistaken, at least in the early inning work of Phil Hughes and Josh Beckett.
Collars got pretty hot Tuesday night when John Lackey hit Francisco Cervelli with a pitch in the at-bat following the catcher’s home run and somewhat over-expressive celebration. CC Sabathia and Matt Albers also hit batters Tuesday night, but the Lackey-Cervelli confrontation caused the dugouts to empty, although not much came of it except heated words.
If Lackey was targeting Cervelli, and the pitcher insisted he wasn’t, he picked the wrong time, since Cervelli was leading off the inning. Putting the 9-hole hitter on base to start an inning is pretty dumb, and it cost the Red Sox because Cervelli eventually came around to score.
Wednesday night, however, it was business as usual as the Yanks and the Red Sox concentrated on baseball.
Derek Jeter moved into the top 20 of all-time hitters with singles in his first two at-bats to pass Craig Biggio and take over 20th place with 3,061. That leaves the Captain 20 knocks behind No. 19 Cap Anson. DJ’s first hit was a single off the glove of center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury to score Eduardo Nunez, who had opened the inning with a double.
Hughes gave up the lead in the third. Marco Scutaro singled and Ellsbury doubled, and a big inning appeared on the way for Boston, but Hughes limited the damage by getting Dustin Pedroia on a grounder that scored the tying run and retiring Adrian Gonzalez on a fly ball. The Yankees then decided to walk David Ortiz intentionally and go after Jed Lowrie, a strategy that backfired when Lowrie singled to drive in the go-ahead run.
It’s too bad the Yankees didn’t walk Ortiz two innings later. After Gonzalez singled (his first hit in the series in eight at-bats) with two out, Ortiz drove a 3-2 fastball to center for his 28th homer and a 4-1 Boston lead.
Beckett hit Mark Teixeira at the start of the sixth, but the pitch was a breaking ball that got the first baseman in the foot, hardly a message pitch of any sort. Now it was the Yankees’ turn to take advantage of a leadoff hit batter, and did they ever.
Robinson Cano, an absolute hitting machine at Fenway Park, doubled to left-center to score Tex. Nick Swisher worked a walk, and Eric Chavez followed with a drive into the right field corner. The ball caromed past right fielder Josh Reddick, who quizzically was charged with an error that cost Chavez an RBI for one of the two runs he drove in to tie the score. What should have been a triple was instead scored a double and an error on Reddick and one RBI. Swisher is no track star, but I doubt Reddick was going to be able to throw him out at the plate. Besides, third base coach Rob Thompson had been waving Swisher home all the way, so it was not as if the ball getting by Reddick allowed Swisher to score.
The Yankees then regained the lead on Nunez’s sacrifice fly to center. Beckett may not have sent a message when he hit Teixeira, but the Yankees sure sent a message to Beckett.
7th inning a bad stretch for Yanks
Since joining the Yankees, CC Sabathia had made four starts in which they were in danger of being swept in a series and had kept the broom away each time. He seemed destined to do so again Thursday night and Friday morning against the Red Sox, but his streak came to an abrupt end.
It may be hard to tell by looking at the final score – Red Sox 8, Yankees 3 – that Sabathia was working on a two-hit shutout entering the seventh inning. Staked to a 2-0, first-inning lead on Curtis Granderson’s 18th home run, CC held the Red Sox in check for six innings and put David Ortiz in his place after Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez had been plugged by Josh Beckett. The Yankees seemed on their way back into first place in the American League East by stopping a five-game losing streak to their rivals.
The Red Sox and especially Ortiz had the final say, however, with a seven-run outburst to stun Sabathia and complete Boston’s second three-game sweep at Yankee Stadium this year. And to make matters worse, the Red Sox got good news about their injured second baseman while the Yanks got bad news about their injured relief pitcher. Dustin Pedroia did not play because of a bruised right kneecap but will be back in the lineup Friday night at Toronto. Joba Chamberlain has a torn ligament in his right elbow and appears headed for Tommy John surgery.
Ortiz had two hits, a single and a two-run double, in the Boston seventh in which the Red Sox scored seven runs with eight hits. A triple by Jed Lowrie on a ball in the right field corner that eluded Nick Swisher and a well-struck double by Mike Cameron on a two-strike pitch cost Sabathia his lead, and the Red Sox kept piling on. Only a sensational, running catch by Brett Gardner in left-center to rob Marco Scutaro of an extra-base hit kept Boston from possibly going into double figures in runs that inning.
Sabathia, who had a personal four-game winning streak stopped, would have been better served had the Yankees done some piling on themselves, but Beckett gave up only three hits and hit a third batter through the seventh in running his season record against them to 3-0 with an ERA of 0.86. The two runs they got on Granderson’s jack are the only runs the Yankees have scored off Beckett in 21 innings this year.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Yankees this homestand as another first-place club, Cleveland of the AL Central, comes to the Stadium for a weekend series starting Friday night. The Indians are also likely to be better rested. The Yankees didn’t get off the field from the game that began 3 ½ hours late due to a rain delay until 1:43 a.m.
Look ahead, not back
The end of the 2010 season in the American League turned out to be anti-climatic. We have the wild card to thank for that. Then again, the Yankees are thankful there is a wild card because that is how they got into the post-season tournament this year.
Their fate was probably sealed Friday night when rainstorms in Boston forced a postponement and set up a day-night twin bill Saturday at Fenway Park. Players and managers hate doubleheaders, be they consecutive games or the separate-admission variety. It is tough enough to win a ballgame on any given day let alone trying to win two.
Say this for the Red Sox. They waited more than three hours Friday night before banging the game, which was an acknowledgement that they knew the Yankees surely did not want to play two games in one day with home-field advantage in the playoffs hanging in the balance.
The Yankees’ 8-4 loss Sunday gave the AL East title to the Rays, who had the edge over the Bombers by having won the season series between the teams. Tampa Bay didn’t have to win at Kansas City and trailed by two runs entering the ninth inning. The Rays rallied for two runs that inning on a double by Carlos Pena and pulled it out in the 12th with the deciding run scoring on an error by former Yankees infielder Wilson Betemit.
A point of irony for the Yankees was that the losing pitcher Sunday was Dustin Moseley, the same guy whom manager Joe Girardi replaced with Phil Hughes a week earlier against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in a must-win situation. After Saturday’s 8 ½ hours of baseball, Moseley was the only reliable arm Girardi had at his disposal for yet another must-win game.
The Yankees showed some resiliency by coming back from a two-run deficit on J.D. Drew’s first-inning home run to tie the score on Nick Swisher’s 29th homer in the second and an advantage-taking run in the third. Drew dropped a fly ball in right by Mark Teixeira, who wound up on second base and then scored on a single by Alex Rodriguez.
The first of two home runs by Jed Lowrie, a two-run shot in the fifth off Moseley, changed the course of the game. The Yankees came unglued in the sixth, which began with a bunt single off Royce Ring by David Ortiz against the shift. A walk and a wild pitch by David Robertson preceded Ryan Kalish’s RBI single. The Red Sox went into the same running act they pulled on Mariano Rivera last week and swiped four bases, included a double steal in which Kalish scored from third.
A couple of late Yankees rallies fizzled as they looked as if they had accepted their fate. The major league season never seems as long as it does in Game 162. The field is filled with a lot of weary arms and legs, especially when playing the day after having endured two 10-inning games in as hostile environment as there is for the Yankees.
The Yankees didn’t lose the division title Sunday anyway. When a club finishes a season one game out of first place, any single loss over the course of the schedule can be attributed. Take your pick. Considering all the missed opportunities, Saturday night’s setback ranks pretty high on any list.
There is no point in looking backward now. The Yankees will get a much needed day off Monday and can get down to the business of looking ahead to the Twins and Target Field for the AL Division Series that begins Wednesday. There was speculation that the Yankees secretly hoped to play the Twins so that they would not have to face the Rangers’ Cliff Lee twice in a best-of-5 series.
I do not buy that. Despite some of Girardi’s maneuvering in the final month that often made it seem that a game here or there was being sacrificed, I believe the Yankees were sincere in saying they wanted to take the division. You do not want to put negative thoughts in players’ heads about holding back anything.
The reality is that Girardi has a club with age issues at several key positions. Once the Yankees had clinched a post-season berth, he had to be sure his players would be at their soundest with regards to health in October.
The Yankees and Twins both limped their way down the stretch. The Yanks lost eight of their last 11 games and the Twinkies eight of their last 10. Based on recent history, the Yankees certainly have had an edge over the Twins, who are 16-45 (.262), including 4-25 (.138) at Yankee Stadium, since Ron Gardenhire, an annual AL Manager of the Year candidate and perhaps the favorite this season, took over Minnesota’s reins in 2002. During that period, the Yankees also eliminated the Twins in the ALDS of 2003, ’04 and ’09 by winning nine of 11 games.
The Yankees also had a history of playing well at the Metrodome, the Twins’ former home. This season, the Twins moved into the new Target Field, an open-air facility that could present a weather challenge this time of year. The forecast for the coming week calls for sunshine and temperatures in the 70s in the daytime and 50s at night.
The Yankees won the 2010 season series, 4-2, and were 2-1 at Target Field where they batted .271 with 10 doubles, one triple and two home runs and pitched to a 3.46 ERA. The two home runs were both game winners – on the same day, May 26. Derek Jeter homered in the sixth inning for the only run in the continuation of a suspended game due to rain the day before. Swisher unlocked a 2-2 score with a ninth-inning blast in the regularly-scheduled game.
The Yankees could use similar heroics in the ALDS.
Red Sox are conceding nothing
As the Yankees went into a four-game series against the hated Red Sox Friday night, I couldn’t help thinking about what Boston did in the 2004 post-season. Down 3-0 in the American League Championship Series, they followed their manager’s mantra of winning the next night’s game. Don’t think about anything else, Terry Francona told his players, but that night’s game.
The Red Sox did this, of course, for eight straight games, knocking off the Yankees and then sweeping the Cardinals in the World Series for their first championship since Babe Ruth was in their rotation. That always stayed with me about Francona, who is probably the best manager never to win a Manager of the Year Award. The stakes aren’t so high in this series, but dire consequences could set in if the Yankees push Boston around.
“We’re at a point of the season where every game is meaningful,” Francona said. “We have to embrace the challenge rather than whine about it.”
Boston is pretty beat up. The Red Sox have been without 2008 Most Valuable Player Dustin Pedroia for a month and just lost first baseman Kevin Youkilis, the team’s spine, for the rest of the season. The Sox came to Yankee Stadium in third place trailing the Yankees by six games. After Friday night’s 6-3 victory, Boston is five games behind the Yankees. Francona is back to one game after the next.
The Sox lineup had some unfamiliar faces, none more so than left fielder Ryan Kalish. The recent callup has been tearing it up, batting .471 entering the game. WCBS radio’s Suzyn Waldman made him the subject of her pre-game interview and went on at length about him over dinner with Lee Mazzilli, John Sterling and me. She mentioned that Kalish grew up in Red Bank, N.J., and had left six passes for friends and relatives. He said he was too embarrassed to ask for more.
Kalish struck out in his first two at-bats, but he gave his people in the sellout crowd of 49,555, the largest gate at the Stadium this year, a moment to remember with his first major-league home run, a two-run shot in the sixth off Javier Vazquez, who had a rough outing and lost for the first time in six starts since June 30.
Vazquez, who was skipped over in the rotation twice earlier in the season to avoid pitching against the Red Sox, gave up a first-inning home run to David Ortiz, which was trumped by Mark Teixeira’s two-run blow in the bottom of the first. It marked the fourth straight game in which the Yankees had a two-run homer in the opening frame, but they have lost three of those games.
A player who scored ahead of the homer hitter in each of those games was Derek Jeter, whose first-inning single tied him with the Babe on the career hit list with 2,873. Unlike Jeter, not all of Ruth’s hits were with the Yankees. Jeter had the most impressive at-bat of the game, with two out and nobody on in the ninth. He outdueled Red Sox closer Jonathan Paplebon for 12 pitches, including six straight fouls on two-strike pitches, before drawing a walk. It went for naught.
The Red Sox are playing for relevance, trying to get back into the AL East mix with the Yankees and Rays. The Yanks maintained their half-game lead in the division over Tampa, which lost at Toronto. Vazquez and his catcher helped the Red Sox in the second inning when Boston scored three unearned runs to regain the lead. One out after a leadoff double to Adrian Beltre, Cervelli dropped a popup by Mike Lowell, who sauntered up the line and was lucky the ball fell far enough away from Cervelli to get to first base safely.
Vazquez was on the verge of working out of trouble as he struck out Kalish, who swung at a ball around his ears for strike three. Vazquez then did the unthinkable, walking 9-hole hitter Jed Lowrie to load the bases. Jacoby Ellsbury walked as well, forcing in a run, before Marco Scutaro doubled in two more runs.
Okay, so it wasn’t like giving up that grand slam to Johnny Damon in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, but it was a chance to put the Red Sox away wasted.
Jack O'Connell
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