This one was over in a hurry, as two strong starters were throwing strikes and working quickly. Mark Buehrle was good over seven innings of work, but Bartolo Colon was better. The portly right-hander pitched eight dominant innings of one-run baseball, allowing seven hits and just one walk on 99 pitches.
Colon improved his ERA to 2.77 on the season and has looked flat-out dominant in his two starts this season. Colon’s fastball continued to show late life in the zone, and was clocked as high as 97mph on the YES gun. He mixed in the occasional breaking pitch to keep the White Sox hitters off-balance. Those hitters looked helpless against him.
If the story of the game was Colon’s brilliance, then the storyline that will probably be overlooked is the continued silence of the Yankee bats. In three games against the ChiSox the Yankees have managed a combined five runs. All of tonight’s damage came in the first inning when Robinson Cano hit a three-run home run, scoring Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. The Yankees were scoreless after that as Buehrle got his act together, but the damage was done.
Mariano Rivera came on to pitch the ninth. After blowing consecutive saves in his last two appearances, it was refreshing to see Rivera return to form. He was perfect on 23 pitches to pick up the save, with one strikeout. Every season Mo usually struggles once or twice before straightening himself out. Hopefully his appearance in the ninth in this one was the start of another long stretch dominance.
The other storyline from this is that Mark Teixeira was pulled late from the game for Eric Chavez. Apparently Tex’s shoulder was a little sore when he woke up before the game, but nothing else. River Ave. Blues is reporting that there are no tests scheduled so Tex should be fine.
The Yankees look to split the four-game set tomorrow. CC Sabathia takes the mound for the Bombers against Edwin Jackson. Normally I’d say this one strongly favors the Yankees, except the hitters aren’t hitting. Hopefully they can get it together in support of their ace.
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8 Responses to The Bartolo Colon redemption tour continues in the Bronx
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TIQ IQ
Mike,
Looks like you owe Colon a big, fat apology.
Incredibly, Colon has already reached Oliver’s pre-season WAR projection of 0.6.
I declared my truce with the Kreme after his last start. Color me impressed. That dude can pitch.
While we’re at it I have to jump on the Colon apology wagon. I said several times he’d never make it out of spring training, and if he did he’d be cut within the month… Oops.
His velocity is what has impressed me thus far, I honestly didn’t think he could dial up the 4 seam like that anymore. Maybe the year off recovered the lost arm strength. The movement on his 2 seam has been sick as we’ll, 91-92 with ridiculous glide acros the zone.
I think he could have gone 9, I’m quite certain I saw him hit 96 in the 8th. Unbelievable really. We should all be bowing to Tony Pena.
*cough*PEDs*cough*
Performance Enhancing Donuts?
I’d give anything for that.
Not to take too much away from Colon, or Nova, or Burnett, but the White Sox have been in a horrible slump. The six runs they’ve scored in the first three games of this series is twice what they scored in their previous 3-game series vs Detroit.
They’ve scored 3 or fewer runs in 12 of their last 13 games (the one other game they scored 9). In those 12 games, they score 18 runs.
Before that, they were pounding the ball, but not lately.