Here’s the 2nd edition of my New York Yankees season long series recap. This series against the Tampa Bay Rays, it showed many things about both teams and why the “experts” all feel the way they do about them. The Yankees in the first 2 games had no pitching, no hitting and looked flat out old against the hot hitting, speed and good young pitching Rays. In the last 2 games, it was vintage Yankees baseball, stellar pitching and timely hitting while the Rays looked again like well the old Rays. Lets break the series down.

Game 1: Rays 13 - Yankees 4. W - Andy Sonnastine; L - Ian Kennedy HR - Cliff Floyd (2), Carlos Pena (2), Hideki Matsui
Game 2: Rays 6 - Yankees 3. W - Edwin Jackson L - Andy Pettitte S - Troy Percival HR - Jonny Gomes, Willie Aybar
Game 3: Yankees 2 - Rays 0. W - Chien-Ming Wang (2-0) L - James Shields (1-1) S - Mariano Rivera (3). HR - Hideki Matsui (2)
Game 4: Yankees 6 - Rays 1. W - Mike Mussina (1-1) L - Jason Hammel HR - Jonny Gomes (2), Bobby Abreu

Rays hitting. The Rays definitely look like a contender in the American League East. When facing mediocre pitching they should dominate which is evident by Games 1 & 2. In Game 1, Ian Kennedy had nothing at all, no control and no pop to his not-so fast fastball and got abused for it, giving up 6 runs in 2 and 1/3 of an inning. The impressive thing is both homeruns didn’t even come off Kennedy they came off the Yankees bullpen (LaTroy Hawkins and Kyle Fransworth), which means the Rays were able to beat Kennedy with timely hits and their speed. It’s a line-up that can beat you in multiple ways. In Game 2, Andy Pettitte didn’t have his greatest stuff and got beat pretty good for it, he routinely had to work out of jams all day long and in reality the Rays could of and should of scored more runs.

The last 2 games is when the bats started to disappear, when the Yankees got good pitching. Being such a line-up they are very vulnerable to good pitching, moreso then other teams as its a free swinging team. Most of the hitters still haven’t learned the patience needed at the major league level. A tell tale sign of this is the 6 strikeouts by Wang, a guy who never strikes anyone out, and the 2 hits given up by Mike Mussina, a guy who everyone hits around.

Yankees Hitting. The Yankees bats have been in a season long cold spell, but near the end of the series there were a lot of positive signs that the guys can take with them to Kansas City. In the first game of the series, Sonnastine just didn’t completely own the Yankees hitters but did early on. The team only had one big inning and that was only after Andy had to sit on the bench for an extended period of time while the Rays destroyed Kennedy in the top half of the inning. In the last 3 games, the Yankees bats started to wake up even thou the run totals didn’t really show it. The sign is hit totals, on Saturday and Sunday 9 hits, Monday 11. Monday is the day they finally broke through on the scoreboard tallying 6 runs. Bobby Abreu continued his season long tear by terrorizing the Rays pitchers, in Monday’s game he missed the cycle by only a double. He hit a laser shot homerun in the first to give Moose a quick lead. Hideki Matsui had a couple homeruns. The biggest plus for the team thou was Robinson Cano. Cano was horrendous verse the Toronto Blue Jays and in the first game against the Rays. Starting in game 2 there were signs of him breaking out of his slump as he started swinging the bat better by Monday night those outs started to find holes and he was getting more line drives then flares.

Rays Pitching. What a difference a year makes. The Rays actually have competitive starting pitching now and thats without their ace Scott Kazmir. Every pitcher baffled the Yankees hitters, even on Monday the Yankees didn’t start scoring till Hammel started to tire out. I believe the key to this staff, is Edwin Jackson. The guy was truly hit or miss last year and it was purely based on control issues, which is something he did have problems at times with on Saturday. At times in the game, he looked completely unhittable and that he could be a dominate pitcher, if he continues to maintain control the Rays could actually have a 3-headed monster at the top of their rotation when kazmir comes back at the end of the month.

Yankees pitching. Wow, this series completely showed what the Yankees could be, good and bad. Kennedy was the rookie getting rocked, Pettitte was the grizzly vet that lost his stuff. Moose was the guy who found the fountain of youth, while Wang was the usual solid regular season starting pitcher. So which one of these should continue for the season, one, two, all of them? Who knows its September. Pettitte hadn’t been up against MLB players in a few weeks due to his back injury and it was pretty cold out there, so we can’t make an accurate read on him for another couple starts. Kennedy, he’s a rookie, he’ll have games like he did Friday its just something Yankees fans will have to deal with. Moose he’ll be back and forth, today he had location and all his pitches working for him, even at his advanced age he should be able to dominate on days like that. The bullpen looked great all weekend long, minus LaTroy Hawkins. Brian Bruney, Ross Ohlendorf, Billy Traber, Joba Chamberlain, Mariano Rivera all showed why some feel this could be one of the better bullpens in baseball, while Hawkins and Farnsworth showed why its not a great bullpen.

Injuries: Tampa Bay - Cliff Floyd (knee) should be day-to-day. Dionner Navarro (sliced hand) - day-to-day.
New York - Derek Jeter (strained quad) day-to-day.

All in all, this series just showed like the last why I don’t see any AL East team to win more then 95 games. This division is going to be a battle from start to finish, and the perennial cellar dwellers are no longer going to be push overs. Overall thou, it was a good series for the Yankees. They did get good pitching, the bullpen showed it can stop the bleeding when their starters get hammered. While the best closing duo in baseball showed again that if the starters do their job its now a 6-7 inning game for the other team. At the same time, the bats started to wake up just in time for a trip to play the hot pitching Kansas City Royals. It’s a good thing to, since these guys usually like to hit in KC.

BallHype: hype it up!


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