Good teams beat bad teams. It doesn’t always happen that way, but the really good teams take care of business and they beat up on the bottom feeders of the league. While the Yanks have had their troubles against the Devil Rays this season, they didn’t run into those same problems this weekend against the Royals as they swept Kansas City.
Randy Johnson got things going on Friday as he threw a four hitter through eight innings. Bernie Williams did his share by hitting a pair of two run shots to account for four of the Yanks five runs. Alex Rodriguez drove in the fifth run with his 38th homer of the season. Jason Giambi had the odd stat line of the night as he went 0 for 1 with a run and three walks.
Yesterday, the Yankees decided to add a little suspense to our lives. Jaret Wright gave up all five of his runs in the fifth as the Royals erased a 3-0 deficit in one fell swoop. The Royals padded their lead by adding single runs in the seventh and eighth to make it 7-3. No problem for the Yanks as they racked up five runs in the bottom of the ninth to walk away with the win. Jeremy Affeldt’s throwing error was a huge help that inning, and Matt Lawton made his pin stripe debut by scoring. The walk off hit was an RBI single by Alex Rodriguez.
Today was Jason Giambi’s day. He’d been slumping, but he broke out of it with seven (yes, seven) RBIs and two homeruns. Bernie Williams drove in the other three (he might have had more if Giambi hadn’t been such an RBI hog) with two singles. A-Rod scored three runs and Derek Jeter had three hits. Al Leiter had another solid outing as he improved to 4-3.
The Yankees traded minor league pitcher Justin Berg for journeyman Matt Lawton this weekend. A solid pickup, Lawton was on the verge of breaking out a few years back before hurting what I believe was his shoulder. Since then, he’s been a solid and his 19 fielding runs above replacement this season will be welcome. The Yanks will be his third team this year (Pittsburgh then the Cubs).
Berg wasn’t even mentioned in the 2005 Baseball Prospectus so I don’t know much about him but it looks like he had solid number playing Class A ball.
The Indians, A’s and Red Sox all won today, so here’s where we’re at. We’re 1 1/2 games back of Boston, so we’re right there. We’re now in sole possession of the Wild Card because the A’s passed the Angels, and the Angels are a half game behind the Yanks. Close on both the Yanks and Angels heels are the Indians at a game back. The Yankees travel to Seattle to, once again, take care of business. A four game sweep is the prediction here. The Tigers have one last chance to help us out as they play the Indians. The Red Sox are lucky and get Tampa Bay.
Time to take a breath. Basically, the Yanks need to win. Shouldn’t matter too much what these other teams do, except maybe Boston. It’d be nice to be ahead of them when we go head to head in two weeks. I’d like to see Red Sox fans face when they not only fall out of the lead for AL East, but fall out of the playoff picture all together.
