Yankees-Marlins: It Wasn’t Pretty, but Yanks Take Opener 8-5

The Yanks made it six in a row tonight with a 8-5 win over the Seattle Mariners in the Bronx. The win improves the Yanks to 44-32, a season-high 12 games over .500.

Joba Chamberlain started for the Yanks and was matched up against another young starter with a lot of potential, Seattle’s Brandon Morrow.

Joba was pretty unimpressive. Once again, he had trouble throwing finding the strike zone and fell into too many deep counts. He needed 96 pitches—only 55 strikes—to get through just 5.1 innings.

It wasn’t like he got hammered and he did keep the team in the game, but allowing three runs on nine hits and three walks to a Seattle team that really can’t hit isn’t anything to be proud of.

While he missed his spots with his fastball all night, the velocity was OK. His fastball averaged 92.02 mph and topped out at 95.3. His slider was OK, but his curveball was nonexistent tonight. He threw just eight of them and only three of those for strikes.

Like Joba, Morrow struggled a bit, and the Yanks made him pay with two early runs. Robinson Cano and Jorge Posada started the second with back-to-back singles.

Hideki Matsui then hit a slow tapper towards third, Chris Woodward bare-handed the ball, bobbled it, regained control, and then fired the ball past first baseman Russell Branyan, allowing Cano to score the Yanks’ first run.

Woodward picked up two errors on the play, one for the bobble and another for the throw. The Yanks got their second run on a Melky Cabrera sac fly to deep left-center.

Seattle came back with one of their own in the top of the third when Joba left a fastball up to Ronny Cedeno who sent the ball into the left field seats for his third homer of the year—one of many examples tonight of Joba missing his spots.

The pitch to Cedeno was supposed to be a fastball low and on the outside corner, but he left it up in the zone and Cedeno smashed it.

A single and two walks loaded the bases for the Yanks in the fourth and then Melky extended the Yanks’ lead by to two when he drove in a run with a force out. Joba wasn’t the only one with command issues as Morrow walked five on the night.

Seattle then tied the game with two runs off Joba in the fifth. Ichiro reached on what was scored a single, but Joba should have easily made the play. He then stole second, and third, and scored on a single by Branyan.

Later in the inning Franklin Gutierrez drove in the M’s third run with a two-out RBI single to center.

The Yanks went to the pen with one out in the sixth, bringing in Phil Coke. He once again did a very good job, retiring both hitters he faced.

Phil Hughes then came on for the seventh and needed just nine pitched to breeze through the inning. His stuff continues to be very impressive out of the pen tonight, hitting 96 with his fastball and adding that filthy curveball to go along with it.

Alex Rodriguez then gave the Yanks a lead in the bottom half of the inning with a two-run homer off M’s reliever Chris Jakubauskas. Johnny Damon, who led off the inning with a ground-rule double, was on second, and even though you never put the lead run on base, with Robinson “double play” Cano on deck I probably would have walked A-Rod. I’m glad they didn’t.

Now this is where the game got interesting and, I guess, a little controversial.  After needing just nine pitches to get through the seventh, a lot of people thought Joe Girardi should have kept him in the game.  Instead, he decided to go with the struggling Brian Bruney, and Bruney continued to struggle.

Gutierrez singled, Woodward singled, and Jojima singled. Just like that, the M’s had cut the lead to 5-4 and had two on and nobody out. Cedeno then moved the runners over and Bruney intentionally walked Ichiro to load the bases. Branyan tied the game with a sac fly and Bruney then got out of the inning by getting Jose Lopez to ground into a force.

I totally understand why people wanted Hughes in this spot, and I would have had no problem if that was the road Girardi decided to take. Hughes looked great in the seventh and has been lights-out since moving to the pen.

But at the same time, I also completely understand and agree with Girardi’s decision to go with Bruney. After all, he is the team’s setup man and they need to get him going.

I could understand if we were dealing with a really tough lineup, but this is the Mariners. Only the Padres have scored fewer runs. It didn’t work out tonight, but I really don’t think this was a major mistake on Girardi’s part.

In the end it didn’t matter because the Yanks came back with three runs to regain the lead. Matsui led off with a double and Nick Swisher reached on a bunt single and the Yanks were set up. Melky then stepped up and drove in his third run of the contest with an RBI double into the right-centerfield gap.

At this point, I actually expect Melky to come through in these situations. Derek Jeter then put the game away with a two-run single over the drawn in infield.

Mariano Rivera made it save 501 tonight with a very quick and easy ninth inning. He retired the M’s in order and needed just 11 pitches to do so. Besides Bruney it was another very impressive night for the Yankees pen.

It was very cool of the Yankees to have Rivera throw out tonight’s ceremonial first pitch in honor of his 500th save. I can’t remember seeing any other active player throw out a first pitch before a game he was set to play in.

By the way, did anyone see what happened in Baltimore tonight?

Boston was leading the O’s 10-1 in the bottom of the seventh, but then the Baltimore scored five in the seventh and another five in the eighth to take an 11-10 lead. The big hit was a two-run double by Nick Markakis off Jonathan Papelbon to give the O’s the lead. George Sherrill then shut the door in the ninth to close out the great comeback.

The Yanks are now just 2.5 behind Boston.

	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	LOB	AVG
Jeter, SS	5	0	1	2	0	2	3	.307
Damon, LF	4	1	2	0	1	0	1	.291
Teixeira, 1B	5	0	1	0	0	1	4	.275
Rodriguez, A, 3B	4	1	1	2	1	1	2	.233
Cano, 2B	4	2	2	0	0	1	2	.300
Posada, C	2	1	1	0	2	0	0	.275
Matsui, H, DH	3	0	1	0	1	0	3	.248
1-Gardner, PR-DH	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	.289
Swisher, RF	4	1	1	0	0	1	5	.237
Cabrera, Me, CF	3	1	1	3	0	1	2	.286
Totals	34	8	11	7	5	7	22
1-Ran for Matsui, H in the eighth
BATTING 2B: Damon 2 (19, Morrow, Jakubauskas), Matsui, H (13, White), Cabrera, Me (12, White). HR: Rodriguez, A (12, 7th inning off Jakubauskas, 1 on, 1 out). TB: Jeter; Damon 4; Teixeira; Rodriguez, A 4; Cano 2; Posada; Matsui, H 2; Swisher; Cabrera, Me 2. RBI: Cabrera, Me 3 (31), Rodriguez, A 2 (39), Jeter 2 (32). Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Rodriguez, A 2; Jeter; Matsui, H 2. SF: Cabrera, Me. GIDP: Teixeira. Team RISP: 4-for-16. Team LOB: 8. FIELDING DP: (Rodriguez, A-Teixeira).