Chien-Ming Wang was cruising right along for the first 3 innings, but it was a horrible 35-pitch, 4-run, 4th inning, that began the decent for the ace of the pitching staff today. He was tagged frequently and often from that point on, giving up a solo-homer in the 6th inning to Church. And then another rough inning in the 8th, as Wang tried to make it through that inning as well, but could not. He ended up getting hit around in the 8th inning as well, giving up two more runs, before hitting the showers. Those were only 2 of 6 runs that would be scored against the Yankees that inning. All around poor pitching.
The only offense that the Yankees could muster up was a 2-run home run from Matsui, other than that the bats were silenced. Not something that a powerful lineup like that Yankees are used to. With a lot of injuries to key players, we will see how they are doing after a small healing break. If they do not start putting numbers after that, than we are going to have cause for concern.
This skids the Yankees to a record of a smelly 20-24, and puts them 6 games behind the now league leading Boston Red Stockings in the East. I guess that is the best team to be in that position, since we seem to catch them every year, and make a good season of it. We end the year with a 3 game series against them, so you know that the hitting will return to get the club to the point for drama come season end.
