New York Yankees’ journey in the 2011 MLB season – Part 2
As the Yankees lost two of the first three outings in the start of spring training, Joe Girardi was little concerned about the performances being displayed by the batters. Pitching depth started better as compared to the batters. Bartolo Colon, Sergio Mitre
was competing to cement a place in the final rotation behind Carsten Charles Sabathia, Phil Hughes and Allan James Burnett. Nova who tossed two strong innings in the second outing against the Philadelphia Phillies, was also among the place searchers.
Being little uncertain about the batting rotation, Girardi travelled to Mckechnie Field in Bradenton to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates for their fourth outing of the season.
Phil Hughes debuted his spring training with an ambition to throw more changeups as practice for the regular season. However, he had to restrict to only three changeups on Tuesday, March 1 in his two innings, but the Yankees lost another game with a 0-2
score. Last year in 2010, Hughes’ cutters were not up to the mark and his efforts to make them better for 2011 were not evident.
However, Girardi said he wanted more changeups than cutters.
"That's something that we talked about," Girardi said. "We do want to see more of his changeup. I think it's important for him to take the next step because there are going to be days where you don't have that curveball right away.”
The Yankees’ batting failed again, including Brett Gardner, Nick Swisher, Jorge Posada, Curtis Granderson and Eric Chavez. Girardi did not look concerned about the pitching depth as he was aware of the fact that baseball is more known for pitching than batting,
but it was not possible to remove the tag ‘batting line-up’ team from the Yankees.
After receiving two consecutive losses, the Yankees faced the weakest club of the league, Houston Astros on Wednesday, March 2 to shatter their losing streak. A. J. Burnett came into action with a dominating start and tossed two scoreless innings to help
the Yankees in getting their close 6-5 win.
"It was fun out there to face some hitters, just throw strikes, just go out there and go pitch by pitch," Burnett said.
Yankees’ silent bat awakened in the bottom of the ninth inning to post five decisive runs, all against the Douglas Arguello. Girardi was still not satisfied with the veteran batters as all these runs came off the bats of the new comers.
Hector Noesi tossed a scoreless ninth and got his first win of spring training.
Whatever way the triumph was achieved, the Yankees were pleased and moved to Charlotte Sports Park to take on the Tampa Bay Rays, on Thursday, March 3. Freddy Garcia was again on the move to square off against the Rays’ James Shields.
Garcia tossed two separate two-hitter innings, which was backed by Ivan Nova’s three scoreless innings to hold the game scoreless. Garcia was to make his best effort to earn one of the two final places behind CC Sabathia, A. J. Burnett and Phil Hughes.
Although the Yankees made their best effort to score a run, Tampa took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the seventh inning. Batting was again on the down side, however managed to tie the outing at 1-all in the top of the eighth inning, which continued with the
same scores until the umpires decided to call off the game after the tenth inning. Game tied at 1-all and the Yankees managed to save their confidence.
Continued in Part 2
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