Andy Pettitte claims his back is not an issue, but if you watched any bit of his start last night you would beg to differ. Pettitte was all over the place, allowing 13 base runners in just five innings of work, including six walks.
It might be the reason the Yankees decided to keep Phil Hughes in the bullpen as an insurance policy. I would also expect Hughes to get some innings tonight in Chien-Ming Wang's return to the rotation, considering Wang has yet to get really stretched out in the big league level.
Aside from Pettitte's poor effort on the mound the Yankees looked inept with the bat. A-Rod comes to the forefront of the discussion because his at bats were during the Yankees best chances to score and he did not look particularly good in any of them. His failure with the bases loaded and one out in the third inning is what stands out the most in game.
Today the Yankees will match up against the Rangers in the rubber match of the three game set. The two teams wont match up again until August. It will be Wang in his much anticipated return to the Yankee rotation against Brandon McCarthy. I would expect to at least see a competitive start out of Wang considering he has something to prove to the Yankees and Phil Hughes is sitting there waiting for a job.
Of note as well is that MLB has suspended A.J. Burnett for six games. As has been discussed on this blog before, suspending a player for something they weren't punished for during the game is ludicrous. Teixeira handled the situation himself and perhaps A.J.'s pitch near the head of Nelson Cruz was overkill but I would not expect for a second that the suspension would hold up for the full six games on appeal.
3 comments:
I couldn't agree more. If the ump didn' throw AJ out and MLB begs to differ, suspend the ump. He's the one who blew the call. Besides, since when is throwing at someone a suspendable offense? I certainly understand in certain contexts. But I've never seen so many punishments doled out by MLB.
I'm all for players policing themselves like the old days. I think suspending people for throwing at each other is as dumb as the NFL's enforcement of the roughing the quarterback penalty.
Pretty soon every game is going to be a home run derby with a pitching machine and all the players are going to have to shake hands after every game.
I will however give MLB credit for being consistent. They did the same thing to Beckett as they did to Burnett.
A baseball hitting a person in the head at 95 miles per hour can kill that person.
Neither the suspension of Beckett nor Burnett was for throwing at someone, they were for throwing at someone's HEAD, which is a different thing altogether, and totally unacceptable.
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