Yankees Game 2 Recap

Rookie Wei-Yin Chen shut down the powerful Yankee lineup

That was a tough one to swallow tonight as the Orioles took home a 3-2 victory that they deserved every bit of. Rookie Wei-Yin Chen pitched an absolute gem, against one of the top lineups in the league, despite it being his first career playoff game. Andy Pettitte countered the rook as best he could, but his 7+ innings of 3 run baseball just simply wasn't enough tonight.

There aren't many things that the Yankees can take away from the game tonight, besides the performance of Pettitte, and reliever David Robertson who shut the door in the 8th when his number was called. They didn't string hits together, kicked the ball around in the field, and had Pettitte bail them out all night, until a seeing-eye single off the bat of Orioles first baseman Mark Reynolds snuck by Robinson Cano to give the Orioles their 3rd and deciding run.

The Yankees 9 hits should have been enough to put more than 2 runs on the board but Chen and the Orioles bullpen were up to the task tonight. The Yankees never ran themselves out of innings but they did strand 10 people on base. Including the 4th inning when they had 1 out and the bases loaded, and failed twice to get a run across. The lone big hit came by Derek Jeter in the 7th, when he knocked in Eduardo Nunez to get the Yanks to within 1 run. An opportunity never presented itself again and that was the game.

One situation that really bothered me and I would like to highlight, was in the top of the 8th inning after Mark Teixeira roped a leadoff single into left. The hit would have been a double if anyone else hit it, but Teixeira obeyed his orders tonight in not pushing himself on the base paths with a bum calf. That is totally fine with me, what I didn't like was the approach manager Joe Girardi took in this situation. You have the potential tying run on first with 1 out and you don't bring in a pinch runner for a guy who can't run?

In a 3-2 game with only 6 outs left to play with, you should try and make something happen for your team. I would have put speedster Brett Gardner in, just to bother the pitcher. Who cares if you lose Teixeira's bat, you can't worry about that if you never tie the game. After that, I would have let the hot Russell Martin swing freely and if Gardner still hadn't advanced, I would have either put on a hit and run with Curtis Granderson, or even bunted him. This way at least there is a guy on second with 2 outs and Girardi could have brought in Raul Ibanez to pinch hit for Nunez to try and tie the game.

It's easy for me to look back and say this now, but that was the last batter to get on base, and even though the Yanks got to closer Jim Johnson last night, he still led the league in saves for a reason. They should have tried to jump on the other bullpen guys and made the Orioles make some plays. They had made 2 errors already at that point, and who knows if they field the ball cleanly or make an errant throw.

One Last Thing: The Yankees still travel back home with home field advantage since they get the final 3 games. They need to win 2 of these and their first opportunity will come Wednesday night with Hiroki Kuroda on the mound against another rookie in Miguel Gonzalez. The home crowd will need to be ready to go, because the Orioles crowd did a fantastic job providing the team with a hectic environment.

PS: Ichiro's slide was the coolest thing I have ever witnessed in a baseball game in my entire life.