Gotta love the outfield bump. (photo c/o The AP)
The Yankees beat the Royals 3-1 Tuesday evening in one of the more ho-hum games the team is likely to play all year. After retiring the first eight Yankees he faced, Kyle Davies finally surrendered a triple to Brett Gardner in the bottom of the third, and was subsequently knocked in by Derek Jeter, who continued his hot hitting (.391/.417/.696 over the seven games prior to this contest) with a 2-4 day. If Derek can keep some sort of reasonable approximation of this up (say, .290/.350/.410 or so) I will happily have every negative thing I’ve written about Jeter over the last year shoved back in my face.
The Yankees had several other fairly hard-hit balls against Davies but nothing to show for it until the fifth inning, as Davies loaded the bases ahead of Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod, as you know, hasn’t exactly been swinging the hottest bat of late, and so it was pretty gratifying to see him poke a seeing-eye two-run single that wound up being the decisive hit of the game. KC’s Tim Collins and Blake Wood combined to throw three scoreless near-perfect innings (save one walk), which would have been really frustrating had the Yankees not ended up winning.
For his part, Freddy Garcia had about as Freddy Garcia an outing as it gets, throwing 6+ innings of one-run ball with three strikeouts and two walks, and seemed to get himself into and out of jams for much of the evening. Incidentally, the Royals’ one run came off the bat of Melky Cabrera in the form of a solo shot to dead center – clearly Melky heard me talking smack about him all day yesterday on Twitter. Garcia departed in the 7th with the Yankees clinging to a 3-1 lead and left David Robertson a hairy runners-on-first-and-second-and-no-outs situation, to which D-Rob coaxed a Mike Aviles fly out but then walked should-be-backup catcher Matt Treanor (who inexcusably reached base all three times he came to the plate) to load the bases and give everyone a heart attack. Fortunately D-Rob did the only thing you should do to Alcides Escobar (who has the 6th-lowest wOBA among qualified AL hitters) and struck him out, and then struck out the annoying Chris Getz on a gift checked-swing call from the home plate umpire.
Joba Chamberlain was nails in the 8th, retiring the side on just nine pitches (seven strikes, two strikeouts), and Mariano Rivera came on in the ninth and locked down the save, though not before Jeff Francoeur annoyingly picked up his second hit of the game.
All in all a nice, crisp win, and with Vin Mazzaro — who the Yankees have hit .379/.486/.690 off of over 70 career plate appearances — making his first start of the season for the Royals in place of the apparently injured Bruce Chen, I’d expect the offensive fireworks to come out tonight.
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4 Responses to Yankees top Royals 3-1 behind another quality start by Garcia
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TIQ IQ
I’ll gladly take Jeter finishing 2011 with.290/.350/.410 cuz that’s improvement from 2010 and could be a step towards him posting .300/.370/.420 next year.
My theory on why Jeter has not been like he was through 2009:
His age, the position he plays, the number of games and innings he’s played, the season’s worth of postseason at-bats, the stress, and the partying.
Maybe 2010-11 is merely him recuperating from 1995-2009 plus minor-league play and working his way to having a minimum.300/.370/.420 2012 and if he had that, he gets a pass for 2013.
Honestly, if Jeter turns out to be a .263/.327/.350 hitter this year, I hope he makes up for it with a solid postseason. Who cares what his 2011 is if the 2011 Yankees win it all?
Also, not to knock rookie Jeter at all but while he had a Rookie Of The Year campaign, he wasn’t among the top five reasons why the 1996 Yankees won it all. The top five reasons were as follows in no particular order:
-The rotation, specifically Key and Cone.
-Nelson to Rivera to Wetteland, but mainly Rivera to Wetteland.
-Cecil Fielder (arrival/the psychological boost his arrival gave the Yankees/the havoc he wreaked)
-The 1993-95 veterans Williams, O’Neill, and Boggs plus a rejuvenated Strawberry and better than 1990 on Mattingly Tino Martinez.
-Jim Leyritz’s game-tying three-run homerun, still hands down the biggest postseason hit for the 1996 on Yankees (you have to throw in a postseason reason.)
Rookie Jeter was a nice solid sixth reason why they won it all that year, but someone could tell me .340-hitting Mariano Duncan was the sixth and it’d be a reasonable argument cuz who the hell expected him to hit .340?
Jeter has a much better chance to be a top five reason why this 2011 team wins it all than he had to be a top five reason in 1996. You could say you expect Jeter to have that ability for all he’s done whereas who knows what we were getting from rookie Jeter, but this is oldest Jeter has ever been. He’s the oldest he’s ever been today, he’ll be the oldest he’s ever been in his last at-bat of the 2011 World Series if the Yankees make it there. He may get hurt and miss the postseason, who knows? Who the hell thought he’d miss 5-6 weeks after Opening Day 2003? And there were definitely rumblings from fans and writers alike about would Jeter ever return to form after that injury. One could argue most players would never be the same, and yet Jeter returned and finished with a .324 BA. One could also argue an injury like that to a player of his stature would’ve broken the 2003 Yankees’ back but look what they did: didn’t win it all but they made it to the World Series and were two wins away from winning it.
I’d rather have Jeter up at the plate with the bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, the Yankees down 1-0 or tied 1-1 in Game 7 of the 2011 World Series than any everyday Yankee player, to hell with stats (BA, OBP etc.)
He has an intangible you can’t measure with stats.
One more thing:
I will say if he finishes 2011 with BA, OBP, and SLG worse than his 2010 and has a shit postseason (if the Yankees make the postseason), I’d want him out of here after 2012 if he stinks then and would not mind if he retired after this year or next. The last thing I want to see this guy be is a singles hitter who can’t get on base or steal one along with can’t hit for average and I’d hope he’d either hang it up after this year or next. Just don’t go out a bad player.
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I found it funny that Jeter and Alex drove in the RBI with the almost exact same seeing ball to SS. I guess Alex really does want to be like Jeter ;).