As it turns out, the five-run outburst by the Yankees on Friday night was more of an aberration than a breakout. Their slumping offense returned in a 2-1 loss to the Marlins. Granted, they did run into a very good pitcher tonight in Josh Johnson, but it is still a continuing problem that they cannot string hits together to score runs. Once again, it just felt like they were waiting all game for a home run that never came. In fact, had it not been for a bloop single by Burnett in the 3rd inning, the Yankees would have been in danger of being no-hit by Johnson as he did not give up another hit until the 7th inning.
A.J Burnett pitched a great game. This loss certainly has nothing to do with him. He struck out 8 batters in 6 1/3 innings, including 6 outs in a row (with a hit or 2 mixed in among the 6 straight Ks). AJ's fastball had good life on it and his curveball was very sharp keeping Marlins hitters off-balance all night. He have up only 1 earned run on a home run to Dan Uggla. This was his only mistake of the night. The other run came in the 6th inning when Johnny Damon dropped a fly ball off the bat of Jorge Cantu. With Hanley Ramirez on 1st base, Cantu hit a slicing humpback line drive to left center. Damon had to run for it, but made it in plenty of time and the ball just grazed off his glove and fell to the ground. Ramirez scored and Cantu ended up on 2nd. This is becoming a very big problem with Damon this year. He is approaching a Daniel Murphy-esque level of defense in LF. This is the 4th or 5th ball he has dropped this year already, and maybe you can excuse tonight's ball because of the slicing movement and unfamiliar stadium, but he has done it on much more routine balls this year. I just don't feel confident anymore when a ball is hit to leftfield.
The Yankees best chance tonight came in the 8th inning. With Johnson out of the game, Matsui came in as a pinch hitter for Angel Berroa and hit a 2-0 pitch solidly for a single. (Matsui came in as a pinch hitter last night and walked. It is good to see that he is looking good as a pinch hitter because with the Yankees playing 9 straight games in National League parks, this is the only action he will be seeing with no DH.) Matsui was immediately pinch run for by Brett Gardner who stole second. A-Rod then pinch hit for the pitcher and walked. This is where it all went south for the Yanks.
One of the main reasons Jeter was moved out of the #2 spot in the lineup is because of his tendency to hit into double plays. With no outs and runners and first and second, Jeter ABSOLUTELY needed to get down a bunt and sacrifice the runners over to 2nd and 3rd. Jeter could not do it. He fouled off one bunt, then took off the bunt and fouled one off for strike 2. WIth no option to bunt left, Jeter hit a weak grounder up the middle that was easily turned into a double play. And with that Burnett lost the chance to have defeated every team in baseball.
The two bright spots for the Yankees (if you really want to look for any) were Posada and Gardner. Posada showed that contrary to what the media has been stirring up he is not always so awful. He threw out Hanley Ramirez and Emilio Bonifacio attempting to steal. Bonifacia is one of the fastest runners in baseball right now, so it was nice to see Posada come through there. When Burnett left the game, he gave Posada a congratulatory fist pump to the chest, as if to say, "good job tonight."
As for Gardner, he is embracing the role he is now in. He stole a base tonight in a key spot as a pinch runner, and stole 2 more the other night against the Nats in a similar spot. This is what he needs to do, so it's good to see him come through.
Well, another game down, and another night of looking back and saying to ourselves, let's keep looking forward. This was a tough and frustrating loss, but somewhat of a fluke one. They ran into a pitcher potentially on a Cy Young run, there was a bad drop in left by Damon, and a rare occurrence of Jeter failing to come through in the clutch. Let's hope CC does tomorrow what he is paid to do. Yankees are 8-2 in rubber games this year. If they make that 9-2, all will be forgiven for today, and we can chalk this one up as another series win.
