Dice K Matsuzaka pitched a better game then the league’s youngest pitcher, Phil Hughes, as the Yankees lose the rubber game to those dreaded Red Sox. The score was not indicative of the way this game was won by the Stockings. A horrible combination of poor pitching, and a catcher that was given the “stand down” command from the coaching staff. Girardi did not want Posada even making an attempt at throwing out any batters that may try to steal on him, for fear of further, serious, damage to his shoulder. Posada had this to say to Brian Hoch of MLB.com:
“I knew they were going,” Posada said, “and they took advantage of it.”
Posada was given the command of “no hard throws” by his coaching staff, under any circumstance. The Red Sox camp knew about Posada had a bad wing, and at the same time must have anticipated the “no throw” command from the coaches, because they were off and running against him to put it to the test. The first runner was met by a hard trowing motion from Posada, and a definite grimace was on his face, of course from pain. That seemed to open the flood gates for the Sox, as they ran the rest of the game, like there was a fire. No throws.
Even though Hughes had his earliest departure from a game in his young major league career (being only 21, and in his sophomore season), that does not take away from the struggles that Dice-K faced during this outing as well.
The Yankees offense was good enough today to win most games, especially if it is backed with good pitching, but they did have a decent day against the Red Sox ace. They scored 4 runs, on 5 hits, in 5 innings. Not Matsuzaka’s best outing for sure, although he has a funny way of showing it. He seems to have a lot more confidence this campaign, then he did in the past year, and it seems to be very hard to tell what is going through his mind most of the time. He always seems to be collected and calm, even in the face of great Yankee hitting. However, this was not his best outing, even though he got the win, and took the series from this arch rival. That sent him to a record of 3-0 on the young season, and slipped Hughes to a record of 0-2 for 2008.
All things aside, the Yankees are a little beat up, and they are fairing better than most teams would given the same circumstances. Once the healing process has completed on some of these superstars that riddle the lineup, we will be back to the Yankees of old, exploiting the many weaknesses of all our opponents, and find ourselves again, talking about how we will fair in the playoffs. The season is young, and there are a lot of games left to play. Including Wednesday, when your Yankees battle again with the Sox, again…this time on our territory, in the Bronx, with Wang on the mound in Game 1 of the series.
Next up is the new rival, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, (or their shortened name “crap” as they like to be called). The Yankees are going to have a hard time swallowing this one, after winning game one of this series, drop the next two, and lose to Red Sox, at Fenway Park, dropping their record to 6-7 on the season. The offense was there, but could not be met with any decent pitching, or any throwing attempts from Posada on the runners stealing second and third. The score in this one, today, was 8-5 in favor of the Stockings of red persuasion.
