Indians 4, Yankees 3

Some thoughts on Saturday's game...

Why the Yankees lost

Yes, another Yankee reliever blew it (and two others tried), but there's no way this game should have been tied at 3-3, not with a triple-A pitcher going for the Indians and the Yankees having 12 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

If it weren't for Jorge Posada's pinch-hit, bases-loaded, bases-clearing triple in the sixth inning, the Yankees would have had only a single hit to show for their dozen at-bats with runners on and ready to score. And to be honest, only David Dellucci's poor angle at Posada's line drive allowed that ball to scoot under his glove and get to the left-field wall. Properly played, that's probably a one-RBI single.

And you gotta hand it to the Yankees, for only they can invent so many unbelievable ways to screw up.

How often does Jason Giambi fly out to left field? Once a week? Twice? So why in the world, in the fourth inning, with men on first and second and no outs, would he decide that was the time to go the other way with a pitch? Giambi is ripping the ball these last few games, so why not just pull that thing to right, let Jeter advance to third, and let Duncan's flyball out to the left-field warning track (in the very next at-bat) become a sacrifice fly?

And what was that at-bat by Melky Cabrera after Johnny Damon's leadoff double in the seventh inning? (Kudos to a rejuvenated Damon for all-out hustle, by the way. But more on Damon later....) After Cabrera's first, little league-esque bunt attempt, why try another? And why then try to make up for both by swinging at an outside pitch outside that was above the visor of his batting helmet? Jeter followed with an infield single (a sign of recent Yankee bad luck: about a third of our hits with runners on second have been the infield hit variety, which fail to score a run), then A-Rod strikes out and Giambi pops to short. Sigh...........

Then, of course, there was Jeter's double play to end the ninth..... and so it goes.

The numbers remain ugly. With the team batting just .249 for the season with RISP, before this game started, a 2-for-12 night just seems par for the course. As I was marking my scorecard at home, I just kept shaking my head, not in anger but rather with a here-we-go-again sort of resignation. I know this was a strange Yankee lineup, with four starters -- Abreu, Cano, Matsui, and Posada -- sitting out, but these are still major league hitters, and 2-for-12 is just wrong.....

What was Girardi thinking?

And about those four starters on the bench.... I know it was a combination of things that led to the decision. A day game after a night game, with Abreu needing a rest and Posada still easing his way back into everyday catcher status. And with Cano looking like he never held a bat before, and a left-handed pitcher going, it made sense to sit him and Matsui. But look at the Yankee box score, and tell me what was accomplished by having all those right-handed hitters at the bottom of the order?

The first four batters -- Damon, Cabrera, Jeter, and A-Rod -- went 10-for-19 on Saturday. And how many of them scored? One, A-Rod, on Posada's pinch-hit triple. Of course, a manager never knows how a lineup is going to hit against a certain pitcher, but with a young guy on the mound, why not throw your most dominant batting order at him and make this kid sink or swim against real live sharks?

The doubleheader Cleveland played in Kansas City last Thursday really gave the Yankees a break in terms of the pitchers they were going to face, so why let the Indians off the hook by allowing Sowers to pitch to Duncan, Gonzalez, Ensberg, and Molina? Those are all big-leaguers, for certain, but the Yankees are going through a tough stretch, and it just seems odd to waste a chance to get back on the winning side by beating up on a young pitcher.

Sure, guys need rest and righties should hit better off of lefties, but I can't help but wonder how Abreu and Matsui might have helped score some of the runners the Yankees stranded on Saturday.

Kennedy turning a corner?

He looked terrible - surprise, surprise -- over the first three innings on Saturday -- seventy-six pitches, more walks issued than hits allowed, a still-horrendous strikes-to-balls ratio -- but after staking Cleveland to a 3-0 lead in the second inning, starter Ian Kennedy settled in, threw only 29 pitches over his final two innings, and didn't have that stunned look in his eyes that he's carried to the mound so often this season.

Best of all, Kennedy didn't get saddled with another confidence-crushing loss. He certainly did not pitch well enough to win, but after the way he settled down and got himself under control, he deserved that no-decision. For all the good the Yankee offense did not do on Saturday, one thing it did do was get Kenendy even in the score line.

Let's hope the young lad carries that middle-inning composure over to his next start against the Tigers in the Bronx.

As he goes, so go the Yankees....

If only that were true.

Earlier in the season when he was ice cold at the plate, Johnny Damon said, "As I go, so the team goes." That's true of just about every leadoff batter, so one would think that with Damon's recent surge of offensive production -- he was hot again on Saturday, going 4-for-5 with a pair of doubles -- the Yankees would be surging, as well.

Not so, as we all know. But despite the poor support Damon's getting from the rest of the lineup, he gives the Yankee fans hope that things will turn, and soon, and maybe the upcoming home stretch will see the Yankees put together a nice eight-wins-in-ten-days kind of run.

Of course, what's more likely, given the (hard) luck of this early season, is that Damon will go into an 0-for-18 slide as Jeter gets rolling.

Yankee baseball, 2008, ladies and gentlemen!

And finally...

You gotta hand it to the Yankee bullpen. It never disappoints.

LaTroy Hawkins threw 22 pitches over his two innings. Only eight of those pitches were for strikes. How Hawkins got away clean, without a run surrendered, is a mystery. (Actually, it isn't a mystery. Alberto Gonzalez's terrific unassisted double play to end the sixth inning saved Hawkins from giving up at least two runs.)

On comes Kyle Farnsworth in the eighth. At least Farnsworth bettered Hawkins, throwing 10 of his 21 pitches for strikes (Yay, Kyle!). And the two walks Farnsworth issued didn't hurt the Yankees. They only hurt the eyes of Yankee fans.

Not to be outdone, Ross Ohlendorf put four men on base, and the final one was Victor Martinez, whose bases-loaded single won the game for Cleveland. (And I'm guessing Joe Girardi was saving Mariano Rivera for today's game.... why? Why else wouldn't Rivera be in there last night in the ninth? He gets paid for those kinds of appearances, right?)

In April, Farnsworth, Hawkins, Ohlendorf and Billy Traber have pitched 49 and 2/3 innings and allowed 86 baserunners. That's a WHIP of 1.73. Incredibly, 24 of those baserunners have gotten on base via the walk.

How the piss is a bullpen supposed to hold or save games when it allows nearly two runners per inning, and a third of its runners allowed get on base without even swinging a bat?

Throughout the Yankee blogosphere, these guys (especially Ohlendorf and Traber) have their defenders, fans who think they just need time to get it going. But for shit's sake, are we supposed to wait until July before these guys start throwing strikes?

You know.... David Wells is available. Could he be worse coming out of the bullpen? (That's half a joke...... I think.)

Let's end on a high note

Alberto Gonzalez. Really..... how much longer can it be until he's full-time at short? Derek Jeter (whom I love....) has to go to first base next season. Can anyone give me a real, solid, baseball reason as to why we should wait on this?

You could make the argument, and I'm going to right now, that the Yankees win Friday night's game if Gonzalez is at short, because those two groundball hits in the fifth inning, Gonzalez gets one of those. As sure as I'm typing this, Gonzalez gets one, and Pettitte is out of the inning.

The time has come. Girardi needs to make the move after the season. Tell me I'm wrong.

Season to date

The Yankees have lost three in a row and are 12-13, two and a half games behind the Orioles and Red Sox.

Today's pitchers

Yankees: Chien-Ming Wang (4-0, 3.94 ERA)
Last start: Got the win against Chicago. Six and 1/3 innings, 10 hits, three runs.

Indians: C.C. Sabathia (1-3, 10.13 ERA)
Last start: Got the win against Kansas City. Five innings, four hits, two walks, 11 strikeouts.