Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Nothing Wang With That

You don't need to call Betty Crocker to figure out a recipe for success:
Pitching - Wang looked sharp though he seemed to be battling an issue with his rather ugly looking finger. Man that thing looked gross. What didn't look gross was the continuous groundball outs he was racking up. When Wang has his it working, he's pretty much unbeatable. He could be on the verge of another strong showing in this year's Cy Young vote. I know we're quite a ways from October, but Wang is now 8-4 with a 3.58 ERA. He'll have a lot of competition, but if he remains consistent, who knows? Proctor looked better. Maybe his personal bonfire will put him back on track. And major props to Edwar Ramirez. Have a seat Twins. You guys didn't stand a chance.
Hitting - 14 hits. Everybody chipped in except for Alex, which could possibly be a sign of the hamstring strain. Keep those fingers crossed. I'm glad he was in the lineup, but surprised at the same time. Everybody else stepped up to the plate and took care of business. Cano broke the game open with his 2-run shot in the 4th. Abreu chipped in with another 3 hit game. What's probably the best sign is that Matsui is starting to swing the bat better. If only these guys could do this every day. It was nice to see that these guys connected for some 2 out RBI. If only they could do that every day also.
Defense - With Wang on the mound, you've got to play solid defensively, and that's just what the Yankees did. That DP that A-Rod started was huge. They looked sharp. The defense has been pretty consistent all year. They're tied with the A's for the 3rd highest fielding percentage in the AL and they've committed the 3rd fewest errors. Not too shabby. Especially considering how poorly they played defensively early in the season.
Mix all that in a pot, stir it up for about 3 hours and what do you get? An 8-0 Yankee victory. Pitching, hitting, and defense. We've rarely seen all 3 at the same time this year. We've seen little glimmers of this before, so we know it's possible. Unfortunately, more often than not, they don't get the right mixture of ingredients and we fans walk away with a bad case of food poisoning. Hopefully, by Jeter batting in the 3-hole, Chef Torre has stumbled onto something.
Knock on wood.
J

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