Do the Yankees have a Future?

Well, the Yankees finally won a series, despite it being against the Royals, but it's a start. Brett Gardner delivered the walk-off hit in the 13th inning on Saturday afternoon, his 2nd of the year. The Yankees bounced back after being down 3-0 in the 1st inning to defeat the Royals 15-6. ARod, Giambi, Nady, and Ransom all hit homeruns, the highlights being ARod's game-tying 3-run homerun and Giambi's grand slam. Moose settled down after the 1st inning and struck out 5 over 6 innings. He got his 16th win of the season! Jeter also went 4-4 in the game, bringing his average very close to .300 (only 3 yankees have an average over .300 - nady, damon, and arod).

The Yanks have a day off tomorrow, but it's also an important day because they will decide whether or not Matsui is ready to possibly join the team on Tuesday. It will be awesome if he can join the team and provide a solid bat in the lineup. As everyone knows, our offense has been lacking recently, minus today's game, and they can't afford to go to sleep over the next few series. Hughes or Pavano will also join the team to possibly pitch against the Orioles. Poor Hughes had a rough start in Scranton tonight, so maybe he won't be ready to join the majors again.

Next Series:
Rasner, RHP (5-9, 5.18) vs. Burnett, RHP (15-9, 4.67) @ 7:07 ET
Pettite, LHP (12-9, 4.30) vs. Purcey, LHP (2-3, 5.93) @ 7:07 ET
Ponson, RHP (7-3, 4.19) vs. Halladay, RHP (14-9, 2.64) @ 7:07 ET

Damn, why does Halladay have to pitch on short rest? And come off a CG against the Red Sox. But Ponson's pitched very well for us his last few starts so hopefully he can keep it up. After the Blue Jays we face the Orioles then the Red Sox.

Current Standings:

AL East

Tampa Bay Rays (74-48)
Boston Red Sox (71-53) 4.0 GB
New York Yankees (66-58) 9.0 GB
Toronto Blue Jays (64-60) 11.0 GB
Baltimore Orioles (60-63) 14.5 GB

Wild Card

Boston Red Sox (71-53)
Chicago White Sox (70-53) 0.5 GB
Minnesota Twins (70-53) 0.5 GB
New York Yankees (66-58) 5.0 GB
Toronto Blue Jays (64-60) 7.0 GB
Texas Rangers (62-62) 9.0 GB

Random News

-Melky Cabrera was optioned down to Triple-A Scranton today and Brett Gardner and Cody Ransom were called up. Gardner will play CF and Ransom can play all over the infield. Hopefully that means we won't see much of Betemit anymore. I've never liked the guy..he swings at almost everything he sees, occasionally hitting a hr or a double. Plus, he's not that great defensively. Melky better get his act together down in AAA. He's got a great arm out in center field, but it's not worth it having him int he lineup if he's an automatic out. This also will hopefully wake up Cano. Anyone notice that when we went on an 8-game winning streak Cano was getting a hit like every game?
-Sexson was released. He didn't really do much for us. It's too bad, but hey, at least it didn't cost us much.
-First-round draft pick Gerritt Cole decided not to sign with the Yankees and is instead going to UCLA. Fine, waste a perfect opportunity. If I played baseball and the Yankees wanted to sign me before I went to college, I'd totally do that. They're the YANKEES, for crying out loud.
-The new Yankee Stadium is opening on April 16, 2009 against the Indians. I am so excited! That's also my half-birthday. I don't know, thought I'd add that in there.
-Yankees are back home tonight to play against the Royals. I think I'll cry if we don't win at least 2 out of 3 from them. No, I actually WILL cry. The Yankees need to get rolling and tonight would be perfect to start that.
-Dan Giese was placed on the 15-day DL with rotator cuff tendinitis. Why am I not surprised? Players injured so far this year: Matsui, Chamberlain, Damon, Rodriguez, Wang, Posada, Hughes, Kennedy, Bruney ... let me know if I'm forgetting anyone. It gets hard when there's so many on there.

Yankees-Twins Game @ the Metrodome

I went to my final Yankees game of the season last night. Luckily they came twice to the Metrodome this year, instead of once. I now hold a 3-0 record ;D. I think they won 8-1 or something like that in 2007, my first Yankees game, and then we won 6-5 back in May and then 9-6 last night.

Got there early again and watched batting practice. Some cute little kids shouted Arod's name when he was about to leave and he looked up, smiled, and waved at them. We went back to our seats, way over by left field about a section away from the foul pole.



-Johnny led off the game with a homerun on the 2nd pitch. Every person around us was like "what just happened?". I don't know why he wasn't in the game yesterday - we need him! The game seriously like dragged on. Leads were taken then given away. We put a lot of men on base, but did nothing with RISP. It was frustrating. And Moose pitched a good game, he gave up a lot of hits like his last start, but only came away with giving up 3 runs. He pitched through the 7th, too which was encouraging.
-Like I said, the game dragged on so all of the innings basically blurred into one. It was probably the 5th inning when there were 2 outs with a runner on 2nd I believe. It was 3-3 and Jeter was up at the plate. Suddenly the guys behind me started a "Jeter Sucks" chant..I heard that at the last game I was at..and Jeter silenced them with a run-scoring single up the middle that put us ahead 4-3. I was like "Who sucks now?!". And then I called him Captain clutch and my friend goes "He's not clutch, what are you talking about?". Hah, Sorry elise if you're reading this, but you don't understand. Coming through with 2 outs in the game tied is definitely clutch, that's what he's been all these years. Maybe not as much this year because he's definitely not having his best offensive year, but he's still Captain Clutch.
-Is it wrong if I wanted to slap this dumb old man who was sitting almost in front of me? He was such an ignorant asshole. He rambled on about how Jeter sucks and shouldn't be an all-star and all this other stupid shit. He had no idea what he was talking about. He was like "Now morneau is THE all-star 1st baseman". Um, yes he is quite a good first baseman..it's not like the Yankees ever thought they had one...I disliked him so much for his ignorance.
-OH, and I wanted to literally hit this guy and his wife or whatever behind us. They were the most annoying people ever. By like the 6th or 7th inning they were so drunk. The guy bitched about how Arod sucks. He hit a foul ball right by our seats and the guy was liek "throw it back! i wouldn't want a ball hit by arod! i wouldn't want one by mickey mantle either ! blah blah blah". I seriously wanted to slap him when Moose intentionally walked Morneau with 2 outs and a runner on 3rd. There wre the boos, of course. I understand that, but what I don't understand is why the guy had to call Mussina a pussy about six times then tell the next batter to hit Moose in the throat. That's just fucking sick. If he said like hit him in the balls, I'd be like oh, hah hah, you're funny. But the throat? Wow.
-I was pretty much shocked into silence when Mo blew his first save of the season. You can't really blame him much though, Marte was the one who put them on base in the first place. I forgot for a second they had 2 men on base, so I thought it was just a 1-run game. And Young got lucky, his ball just hooked fair. Then the assholes behind us wouldn't shut up with their incessant screaming and whistling..their yells literally reverberated in my head..OUCH!
-The bullpen held it down for the next few innings. We left after the 10th though because Sarah didn't feel well. We listened on the radio and Arod hit the go-ahead hr in the 12th, Pudge followed with a double, Nady hr, Robbie single then Betemit dp. Edwar got his first save of the season and Veras got the win.

Angels-Yankees Series; Upcoming Games

After Thursday night's game, I'd say you'd be kidding me if the Yankees could split a series with the Angels, the best team in baseball right now.

-After getting a spanking of 12-6 on Thursday night, I knew Sidney Ponson would be pitching the next night. Just like every other Yankee fan, negative thoughts were swirling in our minds. Instead, Ponson comes out and pitches one of his best games in pinstripes against the best team in baseball. He threw 7 innings of 2-hit, shutout ball. He had a no-hitter going through 5. We couldn't even reward him for his great effort. Our offense was complete shit against Ervin Santana. I knew it was over when Mo came in in a 0-0 game in the 9th. His stats in save opp. compared to non-save opp. are interesting. He gave up one run and that was it.
-Yankees got their revenge yesterday when Mussina came out and pitched 7 innings of 2-hit ball. It was very nice to see him get back on track. He's been our ace, and I'm lovin' it. Can you imagine this team with CMW pitching? We'd have one crap pitcher in Ponson or Rasner. But with IPK knocking on the door, we might only have one now. The Yankees got their offense rolling to a 8-2 win. (Oh& can we say congrats to JoMo for a 3-3 day including his first hr of the year?)
-Today was one of the craziest, best comeback wins of the year. I'm super pissed I missed it. I got to see the awesome first inning when Rasner sucked worse than a Grandma pitching out there. He only gave up 2 runs. But we were down 5-0, then only 5-1 on Pudge's first hr (WTG, bud!! Glad to see he's getting it together). The unpredictable happened when we tied the game up, then got ahead on Nady's 3-run hr to make it 8-5 (part of a 6-rbi day). Of course it all unravels when Edwar Ramirez gives up a grand slam to Texeria. I thought we were done for then, it was the 8th inning after all. Thanks to some costly errors by the Angels and good base-running by Justin Christian, we were able to take the final lead.

Hey, if the Yanks offense didn't suck on Fri night, we could've taken 3 out of 4 from an excellent team. The team to beat. Instead we split it and now face the Rangers.

Upcoming Schedule looks a little like this:

8/4-8/7 @ Texas Rangers.
8/8-8/10 @ LA Angels
8/11-8/13 @ Minnesota Twins (I'm going to one of these games!!!!!!)
8/15-8/17 vs. Kansas City Royals
8/19-8/21 @ Toronto Blue Jays
8/22-8/24 @ Baltimore Orioles
8/26-8/28 vs. Boston Red Sox
8/29-8/31vs. Toronto Blue Jays