YANKEES GET STUNG IN OAKLAND!

For golf fans, today was a big day.  The British Open concluded at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club in England.  Growing up around the game of golf, I always loved the British Open, especially the commentary of the late Henry Longhurst.  Mr. Longhurst would always call a spade a spade.  Formerly Captain of the Cambridge University Golf Club, rest assured Henry knew his golf.  If a player misread a putt or misplayed a shot, old Henry would intone, in that thick British accent, "That was a dreadful effort."  I shutter to think what Longhurst would have said about the Yankees the last three days had he been a baseball commentator.  Dreadful indeed, especially on the offensive side of things, but the pitching was certainly not clutch either, yielding late runs on Friday and Saturday that cost the Yankees a chance for victory.

 

The Yankees were in desperate need of help to salvage something from the four game series in Oakland.  Who better to turn to than their horse, northern California native CC Sabathia.  Sabathia was the closest thing to a genuine stopper today, and the team really needed him. Pennant races in this division have a way of turning dramatically and quickly.

Sabathia had pitched well his last outing,  throwing 87 pitches, 66 for strikes, in 6+ innings in securing his 10th win of the season.  On Sunday, CC squared off against old teammate Bartolo Colon in this critical match up against the red hot Oakland A's.

 

Sabathia began the afternoon pitching reasonably well.  In the first four innings, he allowed only a Josh Reddick double in the first and a Johnny Gomes single to left in the fourth.  Offensively the Yankees showed a little life in the third inning sending nine batters to the plate.  DeWayne Wise, Chris Stewart, and Curtis Granderson all singled and scored.  Wise came home on a Mark Teixeira single while Stewart and Granderson scored on a double to center by Alex Rodriguez.  The Yankees added a solo home run by Granderson in the fourth to take a 4-0 lead.

Then the trouble started.  Sabathia faltered giving up two runs in the fifth inning on solo blasts by Brandon Inge and Kurt Suzuki.   Sabathia gave up yet another run in the sixth on a Reddick walk, a Yoenis Cespedes fielders choice, a Chris Carter single to left, and one more fielders choice by Inge who was credited with the RBI as Cespedes scored the run.  At the end of six the Yankee lead had shrunk to 4-3.

 

Sabathia survived one more inning, but gave up a couple of hard hit balls in the seventh.  A single by Seth Smith and a smash off the bat of Jemile Weeks on which Teixeira made a diving stop to preserve a scoreless inning left fans wondering how much CC had in the tank.  Sabathia appeared to be tired following the sixth inning.  Perhaps he has not fully recovered his stamina following his three week stint on the disabled list.  Whatever the problem, he seems to be suffering some ill effects from the layoff, throwing only 98 and 87 pitches in the last two outings. 

Evidently Girardi had seen enough and went to his bullpen to try and preserve the one run lead.  The manager's plan failed.  David Robertson pitched well enough in the eighth, but Rafael Soriano blew his second save of the year in the ninth by allowing a home run to Seth Smith on an 80 mph slider delivered on a 3-1 count. Smith hammered the pitch to straight away center field and the ball cleared the wall by several feet.  Soriano seemed a bit shaken and gave up a single to Eric Sogard who followed Smith.  He rallied and was able to retire the next two batters to preserve a 4-4 tie in regulation.

 

Meanwhile the Yankee offense had gone dormant after Curtis Granderson's 26th home run in the fourth.  The next nine Yankee batters were retired in succession but Bartolo Colon was replaced following a hit by Teixeira in the seventh.  No worries however, as the Athletics bullpen continued the Yankee offensive futility.  The Yankees struck out six times against the A's bullpen combination of Jordan Norberto, Grant Balfour, and Jerry Blevins.  The Yankees also left runners in scoring position against the A's relief crew in the seventh, tenth, and twelfth innings.

(In Photo: Coco Crisp gets showered with water by the Oakland A's after win today)

Cody Eppley allowed the winning run to score in the bottom of the 12 inning on and infield single that glanced off Derek Jeter's glove and could have been scored an error, a Jemile Weeks sacrifice of the runner, Derek Norris, and an RBI single to right by Coco Crisp to propel the A's to another one run victory over the Yankees, 5-4.  This one stung.  I mean losing stings, but four consecutive one run losses in a row hurts like hell. 

 

The Yankee performance in this series leads to the conclusion that the recent Yankee success was more aberration than representative of the team's actual capabilities.  I know the late Henry Longhurst would have been incredulous had he watched these last four games.  I can only imagine his utterances concerning this "dreadful" Yankee effort.   

 

--Frank Gentry, BYB Writer



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