Looking at more zeros

             Surprisingly, the Seattle Mariners strolled into Yankee Stadium prouder than a peacock with a MLB best 7-game winning streak despite their iconic player Ichiro being traded to the Yankees. Of course, the Seattle rotation would work out where Felix Hernandez was scheduled to pitch one of the games, fresh off of beating the Yankees last week and breaking A-Rod's hand.



             Speaking of aces, it had been a while since CC Sabathia had dominated a game and the light-hitting Mariners lineup couldn't come at a better time. Facing him was the crafty veteran Kevin Millwood, who had been able to hold his own against the Bombers in two previous starts this season. Sabathia looked nasty early and didn't surrender his first hit until the 4th inning, which also was a solo homerun by Casper Wells. That only made the game 2-1 as the Yankees grabbed the 2-run lead an inning earlier from a single from Curtis Granderson that scored Ichiro and Russell Martin. Sabathia took matters from there and would keep Seattle off the board through the next four innings. Eric Chavez gave CC more breathing room in the 6th with a high-arcing 2-run homer which barely made its way over the right field wall. The Yankees tacked on two more runs in the 7th after Millwood's night was done against the Mariner bullpen to command a 6-1 lead. With a low pitch count, Yankee manager Joe Girardi allowed Sabathia to go for the complete game, but the wheels were turning after the big guy walked the leadoff hitter, then served up a 2-run homerun deep to right to David Ackley. With his closer Rafael Soriano ready in the bullpen for the save situation at 6-3 Yankees, Girardi put his trust in his ace to finish it out, and he did. Sabathia did it all himself for his 11th win of the season and added 10 strikeouts to his season total.



              With a complete game under the Yankees' belt, Seattle decided to return the favor and sent their ace out the following day to do the same exact thing. King Felix was every bit the King going 9 innings and only giving up 2 hits with 2 walks, and most importantly, no runs, for his 10th victory of the season. The Yankee highlights (or lowlights) include a Cano double in the 2nd and an Ichiro Suzuki single in the 3rd. For Seattle, they took a 1-0 in the top of the 2nd from an RBI single from Mike Carp off of the bad-lucked Hiroki Kuroda. That's all Seattle would need as the Yankee bats were non-existent all afternoon against the hard-throwing rightly. In fitting fashion to the whole afternoon, Robinson Cano struck out to end the game at 1-0 Seattle Mariners. It was another complete game win for Hernandez against the Yankees, something he does far too often.



               A sweep against Seattle was necessary after miserably dropping two out of three against the Orioles at home earlier in the week, but now the Yankees had to settle to respectively win the rubber match before heading up north for a road trip. Former Mariner Freddy Garcia was assigned the task to get the win against his former club. Another former, as in former Yankee Jesus Montero, got Seattle a run in the 1st with  an RBI single that scored David Ackley. The Yankees tied it up immediately after in the bottom of the frame off of Japanese import Hisashi Iwakuma when Mark Teixeira scored Jeter on an infield single to second that was helped out by the defensive shift placed on the Yankee first baseman. The Yankees kept chipping away at Iwakuma with runs in the 2nd and 4th that gave Garcia a 3-1 lead to work with. In the top of the 5th, the once Yankee bluechip struck against for another RBI single which cut the Yankee lead down to one run at 3-2. Raul Ibanez was the story the rest of the way with a homerun in the bottom of the 5th, and then a single in the 6th that plated two more runs and made it 6-2 Yankees. Although not a save situation, Girardi had Soriano work the 9th inning since he practically didn't pitch all week. Ibanez would end his day with 3 RBIs and Freddy Garcia's 5 innings of work was enough to qualify him for the win, the 5th of 2012 and the 150th in his career.



              There would be no bounceback after dropping two of three to the Red Sox and the Yanks looked even more sluggish by barely going 3-3 on the rest of the homestead against two far-inferior teams. The 63-44 Yankees will need to pick up quick as they go up to Detroit to face a club that's starting to hit their stride in the AL Central and was the team that knocked the Yankees out of the postseason last season....

              

Get a star lose a star

             Knowing Brett Gardner was done for the year and after getting swept in a four-game series against the Oakland A's, a call from the Seattle Mariners was just what the doctor ordered. Long-time Mariners outfielder and the first of the Japanese superstar imports, Ichiro Suzuki, wanted to leave the rebuilding organization with it's roster of young players and join a team comparable to his 38 year old age, and the Yankees fit that description to a tee.



             The convenient part was that the Yankees were visiting Seattle, so after Ichiro was traded to the Yankees in a sweetheart deal for D.J. Mitchell and some other nobody prospect, plus only having to pay $2 million of his salary this season, he only had to travel a few yards to join the Yankees in the visiting clubhouse.



             Not taking number 51, which has been last worn by Bernie Williams in a Yankee uniform and nobody else since, Ichiro went with number 31. Fellow Japanese countryman Hiroki Kuroda ironically became the first Yankee pitcher Ichiro made his Bomber debut behind. Nick Swisher, still hurt from the hip injury in Oakland, was out of the lineup, and paved the way for Ichiro to take his usual spot in rightfield. In his first at-bat Ichiro singled and later stole a base, but the Yankees were behind 1-0 until they scored three runs in the top of the 4th inning from a double and a couple of singles to make it 3-1 Yanks. Kuroda settled in and only gave up the 1 run on 3 hits with 9 strikeouts to join Ivan Nova and CC Sabathia as 10-game winners in the rotation. Alex Rodriguez added a bomb of a homerun to leftcenter in the 8th to pad the lead to 4-1, which might be last homerun of the season as it turns out. Technically a save scenario by the bottom of the 9th, Rafael Soriano came back after blowing a save the day before and achieved his 25th save of the season.


             The addition of Ichiro made the Yankees lineup deeper and more threatening, but this combined power thinned out a game later as Alex Rodriguez would go down with a fracture in his left hand that will sideline him for 6-8 weeks, basically the majority of remaining regular season games. Hard-throwing Mariners ace Felix Hernandez would be the reason why as a string of wild pitches towards the night of his night would plunk three Yankee batters, including A-Rod who took a 89 mph change-up off his left hand. Rodriguez went down in pain immediately and needed to helped off the field by manager Joe Girardi and trainer Steve Donahue.



             Hernandez's former teammate and mentor Freddy Garcia opposed him and pitched well for the Yankees, only giving up three runs in 7.1 innings of work. Unfortunately for him, the Yankees couldn't get much off of King Felix beside a Granderson solo homer in the first. Trailing 3-1 when A-Rod was plunked in the top of the 8th, it would turn into a bases loaded situation for the Yanks, but the best they could is add one run from an RBI lineout by Mark Teixeira who scorched the ball directly to the Seattle centerfielder. The Yankees gave it right back in the bottom of the 8th when three walks and an infield single issued by the bullpen gave Seattle their 2-run cushion back at 4-2. The Yanks wouldn't be able to rally against closer Tom Wilhelmsen and lost the game in addition to A-Rod for 6-8 with the fracture that won't require surgery, but certainly a DL stint and time to write more children's books.



             With the west coast trip officially a disaster after losing another future hall of famer to injury and dropping five of the last six games, the Yankees wanted to capture the rubber game and have something to half-smile about on the flight back to New York. Hisashi Iwakuma started for Seattle and gave the Yankees a scare by throwing inside to Derek Jeter to lead off the game. Jeter reacted shortly thereafter by crushing a pitch deep to leftfield in a rare show of pull-power to put the Yanks up 1-0. Ivan Nova started for the Yankees and was sloppy all the way through. He gave Seattle two runs back in the 1st, including a walk with the bases loaded, and in total would walk six in 5 innings, his shortest outing of the season.



             In the 8th inning, trailing 2-1 and on the break to losing another series for the consecutive time, the Yankees put together a 4-run rally and it was Jayson Nix of all people who came up with a tremendously clutch pinch-hit double with the bases loaded that cleared the bags and swung the game 4-3 in the Yanks favor. Russell Martin would knock Nix in as well to make the score 5-2, and in the 9th Rafael Soriano made the comeback complete by finishing off the Mariners for his 26th save of the season.



              Eric Chavez and Jayson Nix will be seeing alot more playing time with Alex Rodriguez gone for the next two months, and a good test will come in the last place Red Sox, who make their first trip to New York this season and despite having a bad season so far, will always find a way to make it Yankees-Red Sox...
               

All hail King Millwood

            With the weak-hitting Seattle Mariners nice enough to spend a few days in New York and the scheduled return of Andy Pettitte on the way, this was drumming up to be fun weekend. Fresh off from taking two out of three against the Rays, the Yanks were looking to stay par by taking two out of three from Seattle as well, accepting the one loss as a result of having to face King Felix in the Friday night opener. Felix Hernandez entered the game 3-0 in his last three Yankee Stadium starts, so things weren't looking good for the bombers.

   

              Daring to battle King Felix was the courageous Hiroki Kuroda, who has been the recipient of only 2 runs of support per game in his last three starts, and was looking at the same fate against the 2010 Cy Young award winner. Seattle jumped out to a 1-0 lead when the very first hitter of the game, Dustin Ackley, took a Kuroda pitch over the left field wall for an opposite field homerun. In the bottom of the frame the Yanks answered back when Cano, who's back in full hitting force, singled in Granderson to tie it 1-1. The Yankees blew a golden opportunity to knock the king off his throne when Mark Teixeira got a single which would've loaded the bases, instead (a theme which would ruin Mother's Day for the Yankees) it all turn out to be waste and zero runs scored. A-Rod tried to score from second on the Teixeira hit and was slowed down by judging if the ball was going to fall in or not. Although he had no shot at scoring, A-Rod ran past third base and headed for home in which he was gunned down by a mile.



             Swisher and Ibanez made outs after that, and a sure bases loaded no out situation was erased in a split second. Seattle blew their own chances for a big inning as they loaded the bases in the 5th inning, only to have Kuroda escape the jam by striking out Brendan Ryan and getting Ichiro to ground out. What Kuroda wasn't able to escape was the solo homerun the next inning he gave up to former Yankee star prospect Jesus Montero, who was traded in the winter along with Hector Noesi, in the deal which brought Micheal Pineda here to have his shoulder blow out for 2012.



             The same as earlier in the game, as soon as the Mariners took the lead, the Yankees answered back, and in a big way. With runners on the corners and one out, Nick Swisher just needed a fly ball to the outfield to tie the score, but instead he struck out. It looked like another wasted opportunity with runners left on the bags, but next stepped in Raul Ibanez, who took the first pitch he saw from King Felix and lined it over the generous right field wall for a huge 3-run homer which gave the Yankees the 4-2 lead. In addition to Ibanez, another Cashman cog, Andrew Jones, added a towering homer of his own later on in a pinch-hitting appearance to seal the Yankees 6-2 win. Winning the game they were expected to lose, the Yanks had to be thinking sweep with the next two scheduled starters for Seattle being Noesi and Kevin Millwood.



            Phil Hughes took the ball for the Yanks in the next game and was looking to build off his impressive start last Sunday against the Royals. Facing an even weaker hitting club than this time, Hughes was even better. Shockingly, he took the ball into the 8th with his 7.2 innings of work only giving up one earned run from a homer. Seattle starter and former Yankee Hector Noesi was slapped around for 5 runs, including yet another homerun from the 39 year-old slugger Raul Ibanez., his 7th of the season. The score was the same as the night before, 6-2 Yankees. With the final game on Mother's Day also the day Andy Pettitte was going to officially return to the team since he retired after 2010, only having to face the supposed washed-up Kevin Millwood, it was looking like a sure sweep was in the Yanks' cards.

 

             Once Pettitte took the mound he looked like he had never left at all. He was good, as in no-hit good through his first three innings of work. Unfortunately for the Yanks, Kevin Millwood, another blast from the past, was equally as effective and held the Yanks hitless through his first three innings as well. Pettitte blinked first as he gave up a 2-run homer to Justin Smoak which put the Yanks in a 2-0 hole. The Bombers loaded the bases in the bottom of the 5th inning and cut the lead in half when Millwood walked in the Yanks first run of the game. Then the next hitter, Derek Jeter, grounded into a doubleplay. Pettitte served up another 2-run shot which barely hit the foul pole to increase Seattle's lead to 4-1. Kevin Millwood, who was an absolute joke in Baltimore two seasons ago and sported a 0-4 record coming into this game, stifled the Yankees in his 7 innings of work and ruined Pettitte's coming home party. Mark Teixeira had a two-out bases loaded chance of his own to at least tie the game or give the Yanks the lead, but he too made sure to do nothing with it and struck out. The bullpen for the Yankees let two more runs score and Seattle gave the Yanks their own '6-2' medicine with a 6-2 win of their own.



              Going into this weekend with King Felix as one of the starters, the Yanks had to be content with taking two out of three. Plus, even the most die-hard Yankee fan had to be curious on how Pettitte's stuff would be after not had thrown a pitch in the majors since the 2010 playoffs, and it was all there, except a few location mistakes. Next the Yanks visit their home away from home to face the first place (yes, true) Baltimore Orioles.

              With Pettitte back and Hughes finally looking like a starting pitcher, the Yankees at 19-15 can say they have a rotation for 2012........