The Yankees did the unforgivable this week and split a four game set with the Minnesota Twins instead of giving their manager, Ron Gardenhire, his usual nightmare when he visits the Bronx.
The opening game Monday night was a marquee match-up of pitchers who were awesome in 2003, Freddy Garcia and Carl Pavano. Yes, that Carl Pavano, who was on the DL for three out of the four seasons the Yanks had him signed. In a theme that would repeat itself over and over again throughout this series, the Twins jumped to a 3-0 lead on Garcia. The Yanks answered right back with back to back homers from Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson in the Yanks' first inning to make it a 3-2 game, and Gardenhire must have thought, "here we go again", but that's as close as the nightmare would come. Freddy later gave up few more runs and the bullpen was no help either as the Twins walked away with a 7-3 victory.
CC Sabathia took the ball for the Yankees in the second game against Yanks annual punching bag Francisco Liriano. Although Minnesota put a slight scare into the crowd by owning a 3-1 lead by the top of the third inning, the punching bag did his thing and the Yankees had Liriano knocked out of the game by the bottom of the third. Sabathia settled down and the Yanks took the second game 8-3.
The Yankees really carried that momentum into the next game as they fell behind 4-0 in the top of the first inning, but yet again, they battled back in the bottom of the inning to cut the score 4-3. Opening Day hero Hiroki Kuroda was nothing like his previous start and was charged with 6 earned runs over his 4.1 innings of work, including 2 homers from Justin Morneau. Trailing 6-4 in the bottom of the ninth, team captain Derek Jeter made it very interesting with his 4th homerun of the season to make it a one run game, but no one followed the captain's example and the Yanks went down 6-5.
The Twins, playing with house money by this point, sent Anthony Swarzak to the hill against struggling Yankees starter Phil Hughes. In what might've looked liked a TiVoed game from the previous night, the Twins jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first, only to have the Yanks storm back to score 3 runs in the bottom of the frame to make it a 4-3 game. The rally was highlighted by Mark Teixeira's first sign of life this season, with his first homer, and before that a homer from Curtis Granderson, who would hit another homerun in the second inning......and yet another in the fifth inning, as part of a 5 for 5 evening.
Hughes settled down and threw a few scoreless frames, but couldn't get out of the 6th inning and served up a massive 2-run homer to Ryan Doumit that made it a 7-6 game. Although only 2 of the 6 runs were actually earned thanks to yet another fielding error from Eduardo Nunez, filling in for Cano at second base, it was an underwhelming start from Hughes. In three starts this season, Hughes has not looked sharp at all and hasn't been able to peel off a good performance. Luckily for the Yanks, the combo of Soriano-Robertson-Rivera was able to make 7-6 stand as the final score. After a decade of misery against the Yankees, for the Twins to take 2 out of the 4 games must have been Ron Gardenhire's ticket to Disney World.
At 7-6, the Yankees make their first overhyped visit of the season up at Fenway to see how many more dozens of rows of seats they can built on the green monster before it collapses...
The opening game Monday night was a marquee match-up of pitchers who were awesome in 2003, Freddy Garcia and Carl Pavano. Yes, that Carl Pavano, who was on the DL for three out of the four seasons the Yanks had him signed. In a theme that would repeat itself over and over again throughout this series, the Twins jumped to a 3-0 lead on Garcia. The Yanks answered right back with back to back homers from Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson in the Yanks' first inning to make it a 3-2 game, and Gardenhire must have thought, "here we go again", but that's as close as the nightmare would come. Freddy later gave up few more runs and the bullpen was no help either as the Twins walked away with a 7-3 victory.
CC Sabathia took the ball for the Yankees in the second game against Yanks annual punching bag Francisco Liriano. Although Minnesota put a slight scare into the crowd by owning a 3-1 lead by the top of the third inning, the punching bag did his thing and the Yankees had Liriano knocked out of the game by the bottom of the third. Sabathia settled down and the Yanks took the second game 8-3.
The Yankees really carried that momentum into the next game as they fell behind 4-0 in the top of the first inning, but yet again, they battled back in the bottom of the inning to cut the score 4-3. Opening Day hero Hiroki Kuroda was nothing like his previous start and was charged with 6 earned runs over his 4.1 innings of work, including 2 homers from Justin Morneau. Trailing 6-4 in the bottom of the ninth, team captain Derek Jeter made it very interesting with his 4th homerun of the season to make it a one run game, but no one followed the captain's example and the Yanks went down 6-5.
The Twins, playing with house money by this point, sent Anthony Swarzak to the hill against struggling Yankees starter Phil Hughes. In what might've looked liked a TiVoed game from the previous night, the Twins jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first, only to have the Yanks storm back to score 3 runs in the bottom of the frame to make it a 4-3 game. The rally was highlighted by Mark Teixeira's first sign of life this season, with his first homer, and before that a homer from Curtis Granderson, who would hit another homerun in the second inning......and yet another in the fifth inning, as part of a 5 for 5 evening.
Hughes settled down and threw a few scoreless frames, but couldn't get out of the 6th inning and served up a massive 2-run homer to Ryan Doumit that made it a 7-6 game. Although only 2 of the 6 runs were actually earned thanks to yet another fielding error from Eduardo Nunez, filling in for Cano at second base, it was an underwhelming start from Hughes. In three starts this season, Hughes has not looked sharp at all and hasn't been able to peel off a good performance. Luckily for the Yanks, the combo of Soriano-Robertson-Rivera was able to make 7-6 stand as the final score. After a decade of misery against the Yankees, for the Twins to take 2 out of the 4 games must have been Ron Gardenhire's ticket to Disney World.
At 7-6, the Yankees make their first overhyped visit of the season up at Fenway to see how many more dozens of rows of seats they can built on the green monster before it collapses...
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