Halos Bedevil Yankees Again “Get the hitter,” Girardi said he
told Chamberlain. “Let’s make sure we
concentrate on the hitter and not get caught up
with anything else. He left a curveball up and he
hit it out of the park.”
ANGELS 10,
YANKEES 6
Suggestion
to Joe Girardi: Petition Major League Baseball to
play the Los Angeles Angels in Boston Red Sox
uniforms.
It is obvious that the Yankees road
grays are not working at Angel Stadium as they
lost another game on Friday night 10-6 to a team
with it No. 3 and No. 4 hitters just placed on the
disabled list.
The Angels seem to play in
some alternate universe where Gold Glove
infielders make bad throws and drop easy popups
and No. 9 hitters hit three-run home runs.
At
the very center of it all was Yankees starter Joba
Chamberlain, who was handed a 3-0 lead before he
threw pitch and he was on the mound in the fifth
inning with a 5-1 lead when it all started for
fall apart.
In his last three starts,
Chamberlain has pitched 13 1/3 innings, given up
16 runs (10 earned) on 27 hits and five walks. His
“Halo House of Horrors” fifth inning
last night let the Angels back into the game and
left the Yankees offense with an impossible task
of catching up.
“It’s frustrating — I’m
letting my teammates down,” Chamberlain told
MLB.com. “It’s kind of embarrassing,
too. At the end of the day, we’ve got the
second half to get better and I still can’t
change the past. I can learn from it and just
continue to grow.”
Yankee nemesis
Chone Figgins hit a bloop single to left to start
the inning. He later stole second and, after one
out, he scored on former Yankee Bobby
Abreu’s single to left. Abreu then stole
second. But as bad as Chamberlain was Friday he
had some help from Alex Rodriguez.
Juan
Rivera followed with a routine grounder to
Rodriguez but Rodriguez threw the ball up the
first base line and pulled Mark Teixeira off the
bag. Giradi went to the mound with a message for
Chamberlain: not to think about the bad defense
behind him.
Girardi called on Mark Melancon, who was just
summoned from Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre to
help an overtaxed bullpen. Melancon did manage to
get the Yankees out of the fifth but he
immediately ran into trouble in the sixth.
A
bloop single by Erick Aybar started the inning.
Figgins followed with a triple to rightfield to
score Aybar. After one out, Abreu singled in
Figgins and it was 7-5.
Melancon did induce a
double play to get out of the sixth but even more
horrors awaited him and Yankees in the bottom of
the seventh after the Yankees had pulled a run
closer at 7-6.
With one out in the seventh,
Napoli popped up to shallow left-center. Derek
Jeter was camped under it and it looked like an
easy out No 2. But the ball hit off the heel of
Jeter’s glove and dropped to the ground for
a very embarrassing error.
That error would
prove as costly as A-Rod’s.
After
Melancon got Gary Matthews Jr. on a groundout,
Girardi decided to go to the bullpen for
struggling righthander Brian Bruney. Perhaps it
was a chance for Bruney to rebuild his confidence
after three horrible outings in his last four
appearances (4 innings, 8 hits, 4 walks and 5
earned runs for an ERA of 11.25).
Well, if
Girardi was trying to boost Bruney’s
confidence, it did not work in Anaheim.
Bruney walked — on four straight pitches
— Jeff Mathis, who entered the game hitting
.198. Aybar followed with a three-run home run
that barely made the seats down the rightfield
line. The Angles now led 10-6.
“I
don’t know how to fix it — I’m
trying,” Bruney told MLB.com.
“It’s the same thing I say every time.
It’s baseball — I don’t try to
give up runs, I don’t try to give up hits, I
don’t try to walk people. I’m doing my
best every time out there, but it’s just not
working.”
The Yankees did have a
great chance to come back with two out in the
seventh inning after Melky Cabrera had singled a
run to draw the Yankees to within a run, 7-6.
Girardi sent up Jorge Posada to face reliever
Kevin Jepsen.
Jepsen walked Posada to
load the bases and Angels manager Mike Scioscia
brought in lefty Darren Oliver to face
pinch-hitter Hideki Matsui. Matsui hit a hanging
breaking pitch and drove it to deep rightfield.
But it was caught on the short warning track by
Abreu to ended the threat.
In this alternate
Angel universe Yankees drives are caught and Angel
fly balls reach the seats. This to a team that
just placed star outfielders Vladimir Guerrero and
Torii Hunter on the 15-day disabled list. The
Yankees have now lost 15 of their last 20 games in
Anaheim.
The loss, coupled with the
Boston Red Sox 1-0 victory over the Kansas City
Royals, dropped the Yankees back into second place
in the American League East. They are a game in
back of the Red Sox.
They will try to battle
the “Angels in the Outfield” again
this afternoon in a nationally televised game by
FOX. Andy Pettitte (8-4, 4.53 ERA) will try to
improve upon his last start against the Blue Jays.
He gave up six runs and issued five walks in six
innings.
His mound opponent is Jered
Weaver (9-3, 3.15 ERA) went seven innings and gave
up four runs (three earned) and fanned nine
batters as the Angels beat the Rangers on Monday.
Weaver is 3-1 against the Yankees but his ERA is
6.11 in five career starts.
Gametime is 4:10
p.m. EDT.
1 Comments
I know. The Yankees have been having trouble
with the Angels, even with Vlad and Torii out of
the lineup. Imagine if they were in the lineup!!!
You want to talk about a blow-out!!!!! Anyway,
nice blog. If you get a chance, check out my blog
as I cover the Yankees and the 2009 All Star
Game/Homerun Derby. Thanks
Arodfan13
http://arodfan13.mlblogs.com
Leave a comment Comments (You may use
HTML tags for style)
To preview your
comment, start typing:
« previous post |back to blog
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.