Breaking News: Bullpen Holds Lead For Pettitte

Now these are the kind of games I expect to see. Great pitching. Timely hitting. Solid defense. A Yankees victory. You gotta love it.
Andy Pettitte was again solid. Rumors of his demise have greatly been exaggerated. The surprising stat of the night is that he yielded 5 doubles and only gave up 1 run. You have to love his ability to get himself out of trouble. And it's about time he got a win. The offense staked him to a lead that the bullpen couldn't choke away, no matter how hard Henn tried. The cardinal rule when you're a relief pitcher is to not walk the leadoff batter. They always seem to come around to score. Henn really needs to work on his control. He's now walked 10 batters in 16.2 innings. The free passes have been something that has plagued the Yankees bullpen all season. Yankees relievers have now walked a league-high 65 guys in 120 innings. Going into tonight opposing teams were only hitting .222 off Yankees relievers. Quit issuing the freebies and we'll be in good shape.
May has been a pretty great month for Yankees starters. Throw out the monstrosity that was the Igawa game and you're looking at a rotation that has given up 6 earned runs in 45 innings. For those of you that are without calculator, that's an ERA of 1.20. Pretty impressive. You have to like what you're seeing if you're a Yankee fan.
The defense continues to be impressive. Those early season errors haven't manifested into huge defensive problems. The team has committed 1 error in their last 9 games. I'll take that. How about the play of Doug Mientkiewicz? Wow. He had a killer 5th inning. He flat out robbed Michael Young and the play he made on Laird was pretty sweet. You've got to love Dougie's glove. He's warming up at the plate too. He's definitely earning his spot in the lineup.
An A-Bomb from A-Rod. It's about time my man went yard. The Yankees got tonight what they sorely missed last night, and that was timely hitting. Granted, they got a little help from some defensive mishaps. These guys put up 8 runs and they're still not running on all cylinders. Posada, A-Rod and Jeter are locked in. Now imagine how things would be if Damon, Cano, Abreu, and Mastui get going on the regular? Instead of 8 runs, maybe they get 12? They did still leave 10 men on base. That's to high in my opinion. This lineup is better than that. It was good to see Robbie pick up a couple of 2-baggers. He's been slipping lately. I thought it was pretty cool of Joe to drop Bobby Beltran down to the 7-spot. I'm not impressed with what I'm seeing from Abreu. He's got to be better than that. He looks lost out there.
I'm still not over that blown call last night. But as I mentioned, the Yankees had their opportunities. That call shouldn't have made a difference. But it did, and I'm still a little ticked.
Stinkin' Gerry Davis.
J