Yankees manager Joe Girardi decided to pull the ol’ “switch-a-rue” today, and switched the starting pitching with the relief pitching, and vise-versa. Evidently, this is reminiscent of a move that Joe Torre pulled about a week ago, when he pulled scheduled pitcher Chad Billingsly moments before a 74 minute rain delay.
Whatever the case may be, the Yankees were blanked today 4-0, by another Kansas City pitching gem. I don’t think it is time to be looking for excuses, rather solutions to the problem. Granted, the decision to start the relief, and have the starter do the relieving is a little…”out of the box.” However, it is not an excuse when your offense does not put up even one run in the 9 innings of play. You can’t win if you don’t score runs.
Alex Rodriguez was the only Yankee with more than one hit. Five other batters scattered hits throughout the contest, but no real threat ever surfaced. Not a single batter ever reached third base for the Yankees. What can you say? Good pitching will beat good hitting every day of the week. Right now, Kansas City has some pretty good pitchers. Zack Grienke pitched 8 shut out innings for the Royals, as the entire batting lineup could not get anything going at all.
This lose dropped the Yankees below .500 with a 4-5 record. This is their second lose in a row to the Kansas City Royals, which can be attributed to a very solid pitching staff. The Yankees will try to sneak out of here tomorrow with a win. Hopefully the bats can come alive, and the weather will stay away. At least long enough to fire up the grill, Kansas City style.
