Yankees keep winning
After the New York Yankees gained a measure of revenge against the Anaheim Angels, the defending world champions seemed to have carried that mystique over into this series against Kansas City, and defeated the Royals 10-4 on Thursday.
While Alex Rodriguez is auditioning to becoming the latest Mr. 600, having sent his 599th home run over the wall on Thursday, the rest of the Yankees batters are equally producing.
Derek Jeter blasted a home run, catcher JorgePosada had an RBI double and Scott Podsednik added an RBI single.
"These guys have been great," said CC Sabathia. "The offence has been unbelievable and the bullpen has gotten us out of a lot of jams. We've just got to keep going out, grinding and try to help us stay in the game."
Jeter got things rolling in the third, with a line drive toward the New York bullpen that eluded David DeJesus who crashed into the plexiglass fence trying to make a play. The centre fielder suffered a sprain to his right thumb following the collision.
"You probably won't see another one for a while," Jeter said. "When I hit it, I hit it well. And then I saw [DeJesus] sort of timing his jump. He made a great play on it, but fortunately — for us and for me — the wall knocked it out."
Then it was Rodriguez’s turn to put his stamp on the game. Rodriguez knocked on the doorstep of the 600-homer club in the seventh inning, blasting his 599th homer off reliever Robinson Tejeda, giving him 16 home runs on the season.
Sabathia (13-3) needed all the help he could get following his mediocre performance. He threw 120 pitches and his performance was not indicative of how he usually plays. Sabathia allowed 11 hits but escaped with minimal damage giving four runs (three earned).
"He was able to pretty much shut the door after the second inning," Joe Girardi said. "He had given up seven hits in the first two innings. That's a lot of hits for CC. He found a way to get it done tonight and that's the mark of a good pitcher."
Sabathia walked four and struck out nine in the effort, and said his changeup and fastball command was betraying him, especially early.
"A win is a win," Jeter said. "You're not going to always go out there and shut teams down. You're not going to always go out there and score 10 runs. You're going to have to battle. CC didn't have his best stuff, but he gave us an opportunity to win and our bullpen did a good job."
No one in the Royals bullpen thought it was going to be easy to head into New York and make it a close game.
"We gave ourselves opportunities to score runs," said Kansas City's Willie Bloomquist. "When you do that against a guy like CC, that's all you can ask for. He gets tougher when guys get on base. It's tough to come up with a key hit off a guy like that."
The Royals scored two quick runs in the first inning against Sabathia, as Jose Guillen stroked a RBI double and Wilson Betemit added a run-scoring single.
But the Yankees had 14 hits on the night and improve their win total to 60.
The Royals fell behind for good in the bottom of the fifth, when Yankees Posada smashed an RBI double to left off starter Bruce Chen. Afterwards, New York did just enough to escape Yankee Stadium with the victory.
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