There was nothing else to do but pull up a chair and watch Darvish. Tonight’s game was all about him. He dazzled with his array of pitches, with his poise on the mound, with his ability to shut the Yankees down even when he was in trouble a couple of times, with the innings he gave the Rangers. He made our guys look silly.
Well, except Kuroda, who looked good against a very powerful lineup – good enough to win on any other night. Bad luck for him.
I hope Hughes performs just as well tomorrow night so we can take the rubber game of this series.
In other pitching news, the hubbub surrounding Pineda is starting to get worrisome. So much speculation about his MRI today and the fact that we won’t know the results until after his second opinion on Wednesday. Are second opinions really that unusual? From the media coverage, you’d think he and his agent were seeking medical counsel from Roger Clemens. (Notice I’m not even mentioning his trial. Oops, I just did.) If I were a young pitcher trying to launch my career as a New York Yankee and I’d been shut down with shoulder pain, I’d go ask a couple of doctors about it too.
Still, he didn’t pitch well in the second half of last season for the Mariners and he had a rough spring for the Yanks with questions about his velocity. Was he having problems before Cashman traded for him? If so, wouldn’t an injury have been revealed during his physical? Or did he really get hurt during that one spring training game? I don’t know, but the situation is troubling. We’d better not have gotten stuck with this.
Yu Darvish is as good as advertised. He really looks like the real deal. He made our team look like amateurs. So many groundouts and strikeouts, good Lord. He’s got a Cliff Lee vibe with him.
Hiroki fought valiantly against the Rangers, not bad at all. Thank god its not a complete blowout that’s for sure.
I still say we could’ve won this game if it wasn’t the biggest RISPFAIL in the 3rd. Thanks Alex…thanks a lot. But still this was a really great game to see.
That video is cute then again any video from Japan has always been cute.
Kuroda should be used to it. I think last year with the Dodgers he had about 100 starts where he allowed 2 or fewer runs and lost. [I exaggerate, but he did seem to get absolutely no run support.]
1 out of 2 so far. If we can win tomorrow that woill be nice, taking a series of any length of texas isn’t easy and we have an opportunity.
The news about Pineda is cause for concern. I hope he doesn’t have a serious arm problem. We could really use him, because if we can get him healthy we can get Garcia out of the rotation. I can’t stand to watch all those wild pitches. Well, I’m sure the Yankees will provide Pineda with the best possible medical treatment — if they can get him back to 100% they will. Think good thoughts.
Darvish is the real thing. How come the Yankees didn’t get him? It”s not like we lack $$$, and the guy is young enough to give quite a few productive years. Oh well…
When Pettitte gets back, the rotation for this year anyway will be pretty solid. [Focusing on thinking positive thoughts]
Let’s get ’em tomorrow!
Bases loaded and no outs and we didn’t score. That ruined my night.
I’m with Barbara.
I’m going to take the positive angle on this (who AM I???). Yea, Darvish was overwhelming and impressive, but I have confidence our guys will figure him out by the time the playoffs come. Its disheartening that they weren’t getting to see a lot of pitches from him before getting out (Jeet leading off with 1 pitch, 1 out?? Although he did have a gritty at-bat later) I’m sure it’s easier said than done to run the count, but it seemed like our guys were making a point to swing early. Maybe they knew they had to, lest they find themselves 0-2 right away. And he did make everyone look silly, even Swish, who has been on it as of late. And with not blazing fast pitches…most of them were high 80s, low 90s! Well, anyway, he’s had his sparkling debuts, but it’s a long season, so we’ll see how he does later. And I do give big clap, clap (thought you’d use that graphic for this post, Jane) to Kuroda…he gave us more than a fair chance to win the game. It was a respectable pitchers duel! I’d be happy with a series win, so go get ’em tonight Yanks!
We were beat, plain and simple. This is just one of those games that you tip your cap to the other pitcher and move on to the next game. Darvish was as good as he was hyped up to be and I have a feeling that he’s going to be far more successful than the Igawas and Matsuzakas that came over from Japan. He had so many options with his pitch selection and with his great command, movement, and different speeds, and not to mention that we never faced him before, it’s no wonder we were beat. We always have problems with pitchers we haven’t faced yet even the worse ones. Yes there was RISP failures but it is what it is. A positive to take from this game is that Kuroda pitched well and well enough to win in other nights.
I had the Cliff Lee thought too, SBlue. It was the way Darvish went about his business without wasting time between pitches or showing any emotion. (Well, except for that one time when he kind of pounded his chest.) Yes, RISP fail was a factor, but that’s what good pitchers do – get out of jams.
I wouldn’t mind getting Garcia out of the rotation either, Sean K, but it’s not because of the wild pitches. That only happened in one game, didn’t it? Once Pettitte is ready, Garcia will go to the pen (unless Hughes gets there first). The reason we didn’t sign Darvish can be summed up in two words: Kei Igawa.
I agree, Barbara and Audrey.
You could tell that their strategy against Darvish was to swing early in the count, Ruth. I guess they figured he’d be throwing strikes. Swisher looked especially off balance with his swings. Sheesh. And he kept swinging at the same off speed pitch. Sorry I didn’t use the clapping graphic for Kuroda. LOL. I was more focused on the lemon I hope Pineda doesn’t turn out to be.
Right, Leo. Kuroda was definitely a positive to take away from last night. Not only did he keep the Yankees in the game but he didn’t unravel when he gave up that homer so early. I appreciate that after having endured AJ for so long.
I was disappointed by the bad strike three call on Grandy and then Alex slowly grounding to Beltre who stepped on third and threw to first for the double play. I appeared that Beltre could have rolled the ball to first to get Alex, it reminded me of myself running to first in one of my beer league softball games. As for the rest of the game, I look at it as a small victory, with AJ Kuroda on the mound, losing 2-0 to the Rangers is quite a feat. Yu did look good, but there seemed to be quite a few strikes given to him off the outside corner to lefties, something you see for veteran pitchers, not rookies. I will refrain from crowning him the best Japanese pitcher we have seen, not that that would be much of a feat. We have seen plenty of them start out well and then flop. Daisuke had a decent ’07 a really good ’08 and now he is not good at all. Hopefully Philly will look good tonight, and hopefully my beer league game will be cancelled due to rain.
You can quibble with the strike zone, Spaz, but Darvish was great. Plain and simple. The Yankees had nothing but praise for his outing. Hopefully, they’ll do better against him the next time around.
Yes Darvish was great. But come on, our lineup is not an average line-up. This series has had a playoff quality in my mind. The kind that was much too prevalent in the last two years. One game we look great, the next we look like a triple A team. I understand that Darvish was very impressive, but he didn’t come in with a 0 ERA last night. If the Yankees played ABC ball, we’d have scored at least 3 runs. You know, the kind of ABC ball that the Rangers played to get their second run. I know I know, I am so negative! But I was really looking to measure ourselves against The rangers and last night, we came up short. I understand it’s just one game. But we’ve done this way too many times in the recent years for me to feel comfortable or to let it go as just “one game”. If the Yankees want to do well against (very likely) this Rangers team in the playoffs, they gotta learn how to stop making pitchers they’ve never seen look like the pitcher version of Roy Hobbs.
No, our lineup is not average, yank33s, which is why they’ve managed to score a bunch of runs lately. While it’s true that Darvish had a rocky start to the season, he was “on” last night. I’d cut the hitters some slack and tip your cap.
I saw the big lemon on your post and I wondered if you had read about the new Yankees perfume, Jane!
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eau-de-mo-yankee-legend-mariano-rivera-pitch-team-fragrance-article-1.1065850
Eau de Mo? :)
I can’t justify the Yankees scoring zero runs in a game. No matter who is on the mount. Take the Rangers against OUR ace for instance. CC was “on” yet they still managed to put a dent. I am not asking for much, just for them to put the ball in play and score a runner from third base with less than two outs.
I did know about the fragrance, Terri. It cracks me up that they’re doing this. I’d buy “Eau de Mo” if it came with a personal meeting with him!
Pineda surgery. Done for at least a year.
Thank goodness for Andy. With Pineda out for th year we’d be in trouble without Andy coming soon. Tex talked to me in my dream last night. I touched his arm and told him I was happy to talk to him. The weird part is he was playing 3rd. I am scared to watch Hughes tonight. I guess I’ll watch hockey and baseball.
Ouch [literally aand figuratively] on Pineda. So much for that idea. Hope Pettitte arrives quick!
The Yankees didn’t quite succeed at the little things last night — like getting runners over and in with productive outs. [Thinking specifically of bases loaded, no outs situatuion: two deep fly ball outs there produce 2 runs.] The importance of small things can sometimes be overlooked, but as a friend of mine who teaches English grammar pointed out to me once, they make a big difference. One time he gave his students a quiz: he chalked the words A WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING on the blackboard and asked them to make a grammatically correct sentnce out of them.
Every male student wrote A WOMAN, WITHOUT HER MAN, IS NOTHING.
Every female student wrote A WOMAN: WITHOUT HER, MAN IS NOTHING.
Just two small diferences in punctuation TOTALLY change the meaning. If the Yankees had gotten two deep fly balls and scored 2 runs instead of zero when they had a bases-loaded, no-out situation it would have COMPLETELY changed the game.
Oh well. We’ll try again today.