Nasty A.J. Dominates Phils, Series Even at One

aj-burnettA.J. Burnett is one of baseball’s nastiest pitchers and he brought his nasty stuff to the mound for game two versus the Phils, against Pedro Martinez.  Philadelphia jumped out to an early 2nd inning lead when Matt Stairs’ single(?) under the glove of Alex Rodriguez plated Raul Ibanez, who’d doubled to left with 2 outs.  It seemed more like an aberration, rather than a sign of things to come.  A.J. is either on or off and he looked on from the start in this one.

Mark Teixeira took a Pedro pitch over the centerfield fence leading off the top of the 4th and the game was knotted at one.  Godzilla, or Shemp if you prefer, Hideki Matsui drove one out to right in the 6th, giving New York the 2-1 advantage.  Down by a run, Charlie Manuel allowed Martinez to pitch to Jerry Hairston, Jr., and the second guessing began when JH2 hit a soft single to right.  Joe Girardi jumped on this opportunity by inserting pinch runner Brett Gardner at first.  Gardner went to 3rd on a Melky Cabrera hit to right (for sure Pedro shouldn’t have been allowed to pitch to Melky, but perhaps Manuel was thinking a bunt was in order).  That was it for Pedro, when Jorge Posada was announced as the pinch hitter for Jose Molina.  Jorge’s single to center off Chan Ho Park gave the Yankees a little insurance now up 3-1.

It seemed insurmountable with A.J. dealing on the mound for the Yanks, and it was.  Burnett allowed only 4 hits over 7 innings, striking out 9, before giving way to Mariano Rivera for the two inning save.  This game was a pivotal one for the Series, if Philly had won the first two in New York, it would’ve been very tough for the Yankees to comeback.  But now with the series at one win apiece, the home field advantage was gone, but the Phillies would need to win three straight in the city of brotherly love in order to maintain that advantage.

ALCS Beat: Yankees looking pretty and Angels losing ugly

The New York Yankees will hope to continue their 2009 playoff dominance today against the LA Angels.  They have yet to lose this year in the postseason.  It was close on Saturday… real close. 

Yankee fans can thank Alex Rodriguez for keeping the Bombers in Game 2.  In the bottom of the eleventh inning, he hit his third homerun of the postseason to keep the Yankees tied with the Angels.  Before 2009, ARod had one homer in his last 13 postseason games.  

Yanks fans can probably also extend a little gratitude towards Macier Izturis.  Thanks to his errant throw in the bottom of the 13th inning, ex-Cub Jerry Hairston Jr scored to break the 3-3 tie and brought the Yanks their second win of the ALCS.

Box Score

That’s five errors in two games for the Angels for those counting and a lot out there are.  LAA has come into the postseason with one of the best defensive teams in the majors yet it’s one of their facets that has let them down.

They wasted a great outing by Joe Saunders who allowed just 2 earned runs in seven innings and pretty decent work from the pen by Kevin Jepsen and Darren Oliver. 

One more interesting key stat from the boxscore:

Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Guerrero 7

Yikes!

 

So right now, the Yankees are up by two (and already up 2-0 in the 4th inning of the 3rd game as of this writing).  It’s nice to say that anything can happen in baseball but not every team can pull off what the Red Sox did in 2004.  Is the writing on the wall for LAA?  It is unless they can pull away with a comeback today.