As the saying goes, “What goes up must come down,” but in this case, Yankee fans were hoping for “What goes up, stays up” and that hasn’t happened.
After reaching a season-high 23 games over .500 and a season-high 10 games up in the standings, the Yankees have now lost three games in a row to the Oakland A’s.
The week started off on a high note with a three-game sweep of the pesky Toronto Blue Jays at home.
On Monday, the hero of the day was Raul Ibanez who delivered in the eighth inning of a tied game by hitting a grand slam to break the game open and give the Yankees what turned out to be a 6-3 victory.
Tuesday’s hero was CC Sabathia who was making his return to the rotation. After being away for close to a month, Sabathia didn’t miss a beat as he held the Blue Jays scoreless over six innings. Andruw Jones hit a three-run home run in the second inning which put the Yankees up for good, en route to a 6-1 win.
Wednesday’s game was delayed to start by lightning and ended early because of rain, in between Hiroki Kuroda pitched a brilliant seven innings of shutout ball. The Yankees scored four runs in the first inning and won 6-0 in seven innings. They ended their homestand 5-1 – they won two out of three to the Angels last weekend – and completed the sweep.
Following Wednesday’s win, the Yankees got on a plane, landed a few timezones away and their winning ways stayed at home. They seemed lethargic, were making silly mistakes on the base paths and couldn’t get anything going in Oakland. But it’s not only the Yankees playing badly, the Oakland A’s have been on a roll lately and their pitching has been stellar. They’re the first team since May to keep the Yankees from scoring three runs and now that’s happened in two straight games.
The scores of the first three games of the series have been 4-3. 3-2, and 2-1. Now if this were a question on an IQ test the next sequence in the pattern would be 1-0. Let’s hope for the Yankees’ sake that doesn’t happen.
In last night’s game, poor Phil Hughes was victimized by two solo home runs by Yoenis Cespedes and Brandon Inge. Robinson Cano saw his 23-hame hitting streak come to an end with a 0-4 night and the Yankees lost their third in a row.
So far this series, the Yankees have been victimized by rookie pitchers. Today that changes because it will be a battle of the big men with C.C. Sabathia and Bartolo Colon facing off against each other. Sabathia is hoping to build on his last strong outing and Colon is hoping to shut down his former team and help his current team complete the four-game sweep.
No offense to Bartolo but I hope CC wins this battle.
