Ubaldo ubaldozes Yankees to sleep in 4-2 Rockies victory

(photo c/o Getty)

Ubaldo Jimenez settled down after a slightly wild first inning Friday night, ultimately throwing seven strong innings and yielding only two runs on four hits as the Rockies beat the Yankees 4-2. A.J.Burnett got touched up for one run in each of the 2nd through 5th innings, and that picket fence wound up being plenty on a night where the Yankees were only able to muster up five total hits. In fact, after Eduardo Nunez led the 5th off with a single, the Yankees went hitless until Nick Swisher hit a single with one out in the ninth, further prolonging the teams’ season-long inability to score during the late innings of games.

Oddly enough, as Michael Kay noted on the broadcast, this also dropped the Yankees to 12-14 in series openers this season, and 6-8 at Yankee Stadium. It’s an inconsequential stat, considering that the Yankees have managed to bounce back and take the following two games in many of those series opener losses, but it’s still really strange, and worth noting.

Even though it hurt the Yankees, the highlight of this game was probably Jason Giambi‘s mammoth solo shot in the second inning, which had to be one of the farthest home runs hit into right field this season. Giambi appears to be a pretty decisive character among Yankee fans, but I loved him, and loved having him on the team. The man put up a .260/.404/.521 line during his seven seasons in pinstripes. As awesome as Mark Teixeira has been, and as happy as I am to have Tex on the team, I have a feeling his career triple slash with the Yankees (currently at .269/.371/.522) probably won’t look like that at the outset of his eight-year deal. Of course, Tex brings far superior defense and will likely ultimately end up being more valuable than Giambi, but I still think Giambi got a bad rap, and when healthy, the man could hit.

I loved this little bit from Bryan Hoch’s write-up on yankees.com:

After receiving a rare acknowledgement from the right-field Bleacher Creatures, Giambi delivered his own greeting in the second inning, belting a 2-0 Burnett fastball deep into their section for his eighth round-tripper of the year.

“I wasn’t touching the ground. I was excited,” Giambi said. “There’s an incredible energy playing in this stadium with the fans that they have here, just being excited.

“It was like old times to have that opportunity to play in front of them again. I went up there; I think he could’ve thrown the resin bag 2-and-0 and I would’ve swung at it.”

Now that Giambi has his home run, hopefully the Yankees can keep him off the bases and go ahead and win these next two games.

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