Monday, June 30, 2008

Rasner solid but Perez dominant

It's the temporary end to interleague play for the Yankees. They'll have to give up an off day later in the season to finish their series with the Pirates. I wasn't quite there on my prediction of a slug fest in Queens on Sunday but I was right about it looking ugly, at least from the Yankees side.

It was the first time the Mets have taken a season series from the Yankees since 2004. With what the Yankees have been throwing out there to pitch this weekend, it's actually pretty impressive that they actually split this four game set.

Oliver Perez had great stuff yesterday. He easily over matched the Yanks in the first three innings, but after the fourth the Yankees could easily have worked up his pitch count as you could tell he didn't have as much stuff as early in the game. Several of the Bombers started hitting the ball hard but the just couldn't get enough on it to get it out.

Now they'll head across town again to start up a three game set with the Rangers. The Rangers can rake at the plate, but they have zero to no pitching. It might be ugly but the Yanks need to take two out of three especially when they have a big four game set with the Sox over the holiday weekend.

The Yankees also called up Brett Gardner. Gardner is a on-base machine who steals bases and that's about it. He's like Juan Pierre but he can take a walk. The hope is probably that Gardner will spark the offense or steal a few key bases late in games. If anything he might just light a fire under Melky Cabrera who has slowly gotten worse and worse this season.

I would imagine that this might also be an audition for Gardner to replace Cabrera. I would imagine that any deal Cashman might pull the trigger at the trade deadline would probably include Cabrera as he still has projection and value left.

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