WHY THE ROAD TRIP WAS A SUCCESS

(Photo: Getty)
After starting 0-2 on a 10 day, nine game, three city west coast road trip, the Yankees rebounded to win six of the final seven games to give them a 6-3 record overall during this grueling trip. That is very impressive considering the amount of great pitching they saw along the way.
Seattle- May 27-29: The Yankees were able to get to both of Seattle's aces Michael Pineda, and Felix Hernandez for enough runs to win both games. In fact, they combined for a 5.25 ERA in 12 innings in those two games. The Yankees had multi-run leads in both of those games, but failed to hold onto both of them, and they ended up losing both games. The Yanks were able to bounce back in the finale behind CC Monster, as Casey likes to call him. He went eight innings, allowing just one run.(Photo: AP)
Oakland- May 30-June 1: This time the Yankees had to face three aces instead of two. Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, and Gio Gonzalez all had ERA's in the low twos at the time of their respective starts, but they were easily handled by the Yankees bats. The three combined to go 18.1 innings with a bloated 8.34 ERA. That was plenty of offense for pitchers Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia, and AJ Burnett--who all pitched well and all three won each of their respective starts. But, the star during the stop in Oakland came in game one of the series. That star was Bartolo Colon. He threw a four hit, complete game shutout--his first since 2006. This was also the Yankees first three game sweep of the season.(Photo: Getty)
Los Angeles- June 3-5: The Yankees came into this series rolling and they looked to win a series in a place that has been a house of horrors for them the last decade. They were able to accomplish that task and finish the road trip strong despite dropping the first game 3-2 against yet another ace in Jered Weaver for the Angels. But, the Yankees were able to play long ball the final two games in Anaheim. Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira--twice--and Nick Swisher all went deep and accounted for seven of the eight runs scored on Saturday and Sunday to take two of three from the Angels.

This was huge that the Yankees went 6-3 on this west coast swing after starting 0-2 against the Mariners. And, all three of the Yankees losses were by just one run. So you figure if the ball bounced their way just a small number of times they could have easily gone 9-0. But, that's baseball. Every team goes through that and you move on even if you don't get the lucky breaks.

The road doesn't get much easier for the Yankees as they head home back to the Bronx to start a three game series against the evil Boston Red Sox, who trail the Yanks by one game in the standings. Game one is on Tuesday with Freddy Garcia (4-4, 3.34 ERA) against the struggling Jon Lester (7-2, 3.94 ERA)



--Jesse Schindler, BYB Staff Writer




Please comment and let me know what you think and follow me on Twitter @BleednYankeeBlu and join the group Bleeding Yankee Blue on Facebook, just type it in.