SABATHIA & YANKEE OFFENSE ROLL OVER TWINS

Following last night’s frustrating 5-4 loss to the Minnesota Twins, this game on Wednesday was pretty much a must-win for the Yankees as their ace, CC Sabathia, was toeing the rubber. At no time do you want to lose a series to the Twins, especially when they’re not contending and when you’re in a pennant race with the Orioles. With that said, CC and the Bombers’ offense showed up as the Yanks took the series finale in blowout fashion 8-2.

Let’s start with the big fella, CC Monster. He was coming off a fantastic performance last Friday against the Oakland A’s; shutting them out through eight. This time around, Sabathia allowed just two runs in 8 innings on six hits, just one walk and a whopping 10 strikeouts. In his last two starts, Sabathia has combined to pitch 16 innings of two run ball and 21 strikeouts. All of this “CC’s not an ace” nonsense has been put to rest, at least for now.

Last night the Yankees could only muster up two runs in six innings off Esmerling Vasquez. Today they faced Sam Deduno and he kept the Yankees in check through 1.2 innings. However, the reason why he could only complete 1.2 innings is because he had to leave the game with an eye infection. His replacement, Brian Duensing, got roughed up as the Bombers tagged six runs off of him in just 1 inning of work. This came from a Robinson Cano two-run double, a Nick Swisher RBI single, and a Curtis Granderson two-run triple.

To cap off the six-run inning, Grandy scored on a Duensing wild pitch. Chris Dickerson completed the scoring with a long two-run homerun scoring Raul Ibanez in the sixth.

(In Photo: Chris Dickerson)
The long-awaited return of Brett Gardner finally came to an end in this one. He replaced Ichiro and played left field in the ninth inning. This was Gardner’s first game since injuring his elbow way back on April 17 against these same Minnesota Twins. At first when there was word that Gardner could get activated we only thought he’d be activated just so he could pinch-run and play defense. However, according to this piece, HERE by Mark Feinsand of the Daily News, Gardner could bat in a game on Sunday or Monday. Fingers crossed.

Final was 8-2, Yankees

The win for the Yanks gives them 14 wins in their last 20 games and the lead in the AL East is up to 2 games, which could either go up or down one half game depending on if the Orioles lose to the Blue Jays or not. Speaking of the Blue Jays, the Yankees well head on up to Toronto for their final road series of the regular season as Ivan Nova (12-7, 4.94 ERA) kicks off the four-game set against Brandon Morrow (8-7, 3.28 ERA) on Thursday.




--Jesse Schindler, BYB Lead Staff Writer
Follow me on Twitter @SchindlerJesse


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