Results tagged ‘ Nationals Park ’
Joe makes some history with 500th victory
The Yankees’ victory at Nationals Park Friday night was career No. 500 as a manager for Joe Girardi. He became the 123rd manager in major league history to reach that plateau.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, with a 500-373 record Girardi was the first manager to get 500 victories with fewer than 380 losses since current Nationals manager Davey Johnson in 1989 with the Mets when he got to 500 April 29, 1989 with 329 losses.
The only other managers to do so in the expansion era since 1961 were Hall of Famers Sparky Anderson and Earl Weaver. Girardi was also the first manager to collect 500 victories prior to his 48th birthday since current Marlins skipper Ozzie Guillen, who was 45 years, 227 days old when he got to 500 Sept. 4, 2009 with the White Sox.
The Yankees have signed the following picks from the 2012 First-Year Player Draft: C Austin Aune (second round), RHP Nick Goody (sixth), RHP Taylor Garrison (seventh), CF Taylor Dugas (eighth, RHP Derek Varnadore (ninth), 1B Matt Snyder (10th), LHP Caleb Frare (11th), C Chris Breen (12th), LHP James Pazos (13th), RHP Andrew Benak (14th), RHP Stefan Lopez (16th), LHP Timothy Flight (17th), LHP Dietrich Enns (19th), OF Danny Oh (27th), 1B Saxon Butler (33rd), LHP Eric Erickson (34th) and RHP Charles Basford (37th).
Girardi has many reasons to savor 500th victory
Joe Girardi’s 500th managerial victory will be easy for him to remember because so many things went well for the Yankees. When two teams with six-game winning streaks collide, something has got to give, but all the American League East leading Yanks gave the National League East leading Nationals Friday night was trouble.
In their 7-2 victory, the Yankees got another strong start from Phil Hughes, they got big hits with runners in scoring position, had a hit with the bases loaded and came within one out of winning a game without hitting a home run. Curtis Granderson ruined that possibility when he slammed his 20th homer with two down in the ninth, but that was fine for Girardi.
The manager was even able to work David Robertson into the mix by using him in a non-save situation in the ninth. Robbie showed some rust by allowing a run on a pair of doubles, but it was nice to see him back in a game for the first time in more than a month.
Hughes scattered six hits and two walks with nine strikeouts over six innings to win his third straight start. It was a one-run game while Hughes was on the mound in a duel with Nationals lefthander Gio Gonzalez, who is 8-3 this season but sustained his fourth straight loss to the Yankees as his career record against them fell to 1-5.
Actually, Gonzalez was out of the game by the time the Yankees broke it open. Manager Davey Johnson lifted Gonzalez, who seemed none too happy about it, after he gave up a leadoff single to Andruw Jones in the seventh. The Yanks then roughed up relievers Brad Lidge and Mike Gonzalez for four runs.
Derek Jeter got the bases-loaded hit, a single. Another run scored on a wild throw by shortstop Ian Desmond. Granderson doubled in two more runs. The Yankees had 4-for-8 (.500) with runners in scoring position. Cody Eppley and Clay Rapada provided a shutout inning of relief apiece before Robertson worked the ninth.
The 2-1 lead Hughes worked with was supplied by RBI singles from Alex Rodriguez and Nick Swisher. For A-Rod, the RBI was career No. 1,924, which tied him with Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx for sixth place on the all-time list. In the fifth spot is another Hall of Famer, Stan Musial, at 1,951. And just the other day, Rodriguez matched Lou Gehrig’s grand slam mark of 23. A-Rod is running elbows with an awful lot of Hall of Famers these days.
Hughes, whose record improved to 7-5, has pitched to a 1.29 ERA over his past three starts, all victories. Going back further, over his past eight starts since May 6, Hughes is 6-1 with a 3.27 ERA and 49 strikeouts in 52 1/3 innings. The righthander has lowered his ERA over that stretch from 7.48 to 4.50. Hughes also ran his career record in inter-league play to 4-1 with a 3.55 ERA.
It was the Yankees’ first game at Nationals Park. They are 19-18 in their debut games at new stadiums in the expansion era dating to 1961.
Yanks get first look at Nationals Park
The Yankees played their first game at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., Friday. Since 1961, the beginning of the expansion era in the major leagues, the Yankees have an 18-18 record in their first games at new ballparks.
The Yankees and Nationals entered the game with six-game winning streaks. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last time the Yankees played a game in which both they and their opponent entered with winning streaks of six or more games was Sept. 16, 1968 at old Tiger Stadium in Detroit with the Yanks carrying a 10-game winning streak into the game against the Tigers, who were on a six-game winning streak. Detroit won, 9-1.
The Nationals, who were 38-23 (.623), were one of only two clubs with better records than the Yanks’ American League leading 37-25 (.597). The other was the Dodgers at 40-24 (.625). The last time the Yankees played a Washington club with a better record was in 1969 against the Senators, who entered the AL as an expansion club in 1961 and moved to Texas in 1972 and became the Rangers. The original Senators franchise moved to Minnesota in 1961 and became the Twins. The current Washington franchise was originally the Montreal Expos, who started in the National League in 1969 and became the Nationals in 2005.
Relief pitcher David Robertson was back on the Yankees’ 25-man roster as righthander David Phelps was optioned to Class A Tampa. Phelps will eventually go to Triple A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre as a starter, but the Yankees want him to build up arm strength. Phelps, who was 1-2 with a 2.94 ERA, has pitched only two-thirds of an inning since May 28.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi plans to keep Rafael Soriano in the closer role with Robertson likely to return to his familiar eighth-inning setup role. Lefthander Boone Logan has pitched 10 consecutive scoreless outings since May 22, a period covering five innings. He has allowed one earned run in 17 appearances on the road this season, having surrendered a solo home run to the Rays’ Jeff Keppinger in his first road outing April 8 at St. Petersburg, Fla. Logan has held opponents scoreless in each of his past 16 outings. He has not allowed a left-handed batter to reach base since May 6 at Kansas City (Jarrod Dyson on a single) and has retired his last nine.
There was a familiar face in the Yankees’ dugout. Gene Monahan came out of retirement to work this weekend’s series for his successor and long-time partner, Steve Donohue, who is attending his daughter’s high school graduation.
An official scoring change was made by Major League Baseball for the Yankees-Rays game
June 7. In the top of the fourth inning, Drew Sutton’s two-run double has been changed to a double, one RBI with the second run scoring on an error by right fielder Jayson Nix. That made the run unearned against CC Sabathia, who gave up five runs but four were not earned. Nix was in Friday night’s game at second base as Robinson Cano was not in the starting lineup for the first time this season and got an extra day’s rest following Thursday’s open date.
Yanks dominant in inter-league play
Perhaps a dose of inter-league play is just what the Yankees need to shake this three-game losing streak. After all, the Yankees have the most victories and the highest winning percentage of any club since inter-league play began in 1997. Ironically, that first year was the worst for the Yanks in inter-league competition with a 5-10 mark, their only losing record.
The Reds stayed in New York after a two-game series at Citi Field and opened a three-game set Friday night against the Yankees. This is Cincinnati’s first visit to the current Yankee Stadium. The Reds are the 20th club to come to the new Stadium. The Yankees are 14-5 against clubs in their first games in the new digs.
This weekend’s series marks the first three of 18 inter-league games the Yankees will play this year. The other games are against the Mets June 8-10 at the Stadium and June 22-24 at Citi Field, the Braves June 11-13 at Atlanta’s Turner Field and June 18-20 at the Stadium and the Nationals June 15-17 at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. The Yankees’ two series against Atlanta will mark the second time they are facing a National League opponent other than the Mets in a home-and-home series in the same year. The other time was also against the Braves in 1998, the same year that the Yankees began playing the Mets twice in the same season.
The Yankees were 13-5 (.722) in inter-league play in 2011 and have an overall record of 157-107 (.595) against NL teams in the regular season. Derek Jeter is the all-time inter-league leader in hits (326) and runs (185). Alex Rodriguez is the career inter-league leader in RBI (186) and is second in hits (293) and third in runs (173).
The Yankees and Reds are playing each other for the second consecutive season and the fourth time in inter-league play. The Yanks won two of three games last year at Great American Ball Park and are 4-5 overall in regular-season matchups. Cincinnati won two of three games in 2003 at Great American and 2008 at the old Yankee Stadium.
The two clubs have met three times in the World Series – 1939, 1961 and 1976. The Yanks won a four-game sweep over Cincinnati in 1939 and lost a four-game sweep to the Reds in 1976. The ’61 Series was won by the Yankees in five games. The ’76 Series was one of only two sustained by the Yankees. The other was in 1963 to the Dodgers. The ’39 Series was one of eight sweeps by the Yankees. The others were in 1927 over the Pirates, 1928 over the Cardinals, 1932 and 1938 over the Cubs, 1950 over the Phillies, 1998 over the Padres and 1999 over the Braves.
Best of times, worst of times
A little more than 40 miles south of Baltimore, a sellout crowd at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., watched the overly hyped debut of pitcher Stephen Strasburg, the No. 1 amateur draft choice of 2009 who was performing before a national cable-television audience that brought the MLB Network’s Bob Costas to the beltway.
Costas may have gotten a bit carried away by reading off some of Walter Johnson’s stats from his first game. Walter Johnson? Hey, can we put this in better perspective. Let’s take the world off this kid’s shoulders, shall we? Costas said he brought up the stuff about the “Big Train” because the audience might have been looking at the next great pitcher in the history of Washington baseball.
Well, Walter Johnson was more than that. He was probably the greatest pitcher in major league history. Can we let this young person get his career started before comparing him to the likes of Walter Johnson.
Meanwhile, Camden Yards was half empty with more fans cheering the Yankees than the Orioles. Phil Hughes, a former first-round draft pick by the Yankees, joked when he walked into the clubhouse and saw only a smattering of reporters, “Is everybody covering Strasburg?”
Not everybody, it just seemed that way. Beat writers at the time were on a telephone hookup with Cito Culver, the Rochester, N.Y., shortstop whom the Yankees chose first in Monday’s draft.
The atmosphere was an indication of how much things have changed for major league baseball in this market. What is coming up is not a second guess because I wrote this at the time. MLB should not have put a second team in the Baltimore-Washington area. The Nationals are the transplanted Montreal Expos, who had bottomed out in Quebec.
The Orioles have more problems that just their D.C. neighbors, but they could have done without the competition. All you heard in MLB circles at the time was that there was no place else to go. There had to be somewhere other than a market that was already in place with a franchise that had a pretty rich history, at least pre-Peter Angelos.
So while the Nationals show off one of their hood ornaments before a full house the day after drafting another one (Bryce Harper), the Orioles try not to get blown out of their own building by the Yankees and keep pace with the 1962 Mets for futility.
Jack O'Connell
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