Game 83: Wild, wild ride.

This game certainly had something for everyone - lots of offense, crappy starting pitching, wunderbar relief pitching and the overall sense that no matter the current score, the game isn't quite over.  I wasn't expecting this from the Yanks today, but a win is a win is a win, as I always say.  We certainly lived up to the moniker of Coors Field East, that's for sure.  If not for timely HRs, this game would have ended a long time ago.  But before we get into the small metric ton of HRs launched into the seats (by both teams), let's talk first about our starting pitching.  Which really.....what is there to say?

Joba Chamberlain got the ball today and promptly handed it to our fielders because the Jays were smacking it all over the damn place.  What is funny is the Jays scored 8 runs on his watch, but only 3 of them were earned.  So Joba's ERA doesn't take a huge hit, but like that means anything.  His official line was 3.2 IP, 8 H, 8 R (3 ER), 1 BB, 1 K, 2 HR.  Not exactly the definition of stellar, I'd say.  Albaladejo came in for 1.1 innings to relieve him and shut the Jays down, as did Aceves.  Combined they went 5.1 innings, gave up 3 H, 0 R and 7 K.  Aceves pitched the bulk of the game and there are a couple theories as to why Girardi left him in that long.  One, he was pitching so dominantly there was no need to take him out and risk giving the Jays a chance to re-take the lead.  Two, they were stretching him out because he'll be taking Wang's start on Thursday.  No one knows right now what the deal is with that, but anyone would be better than Wang, injured or not.  It seems anyway, the team is content to leave Phil in the bullpen as a longman/set-up guy.  I would love to see him back in the rotation but I'm not in charge of those sorts of things so I have to trust that they know what they're doing.  We'll see how it turns out in the end, though.  Now, about those HRs.......

With Joba crapping the bed and our defense adding to the misery, we needed some big-time offense in a big way.  Enter Yankee Stadium's very own jet stream.  Derek and Matsui hit two very big HRs today, and that was on top of the two Toronto had hit already.  In any event, we spotted Joba 4-0 lead that he promptly gave back and rather than just roll over and die (as we have a bad habit of doing sometimes), we came storming back.  Down 8-4 in the 4th, Matsui hits a 3-run HR to bring us within one.  Then in the next inning, Derek hits a 2-run shot to give us a 9-8 lead.  Later that inning, Jorge hits a double to the gap scoring Johnny Damon and now we're leading 10-8.  No more offense after that but thankfully it was enough.  We had lots of offensive stars this afternoon; Derek went 4-5 with 2 RBI, Jorge went 3-5 with 3 RBI, Matsui went 2-4 with 4 RBI and Robbie Cano, trying to atone for last night, went 2-5.  We've got the series now, let's go for the Crazy Stein tomorrow.  Hopefully with less dramatics.  Not that I mind the dramatics, but for cryin' out loud.....is an easy win that hard to come by right now?  Yeesh. 

Stars of the Game™