Burnett & Bats Lead Yankees To 8-0 Win Over Indians

It took the Yankees 3 innings tonight to equal their combined hit total from the 1st two games of the Indians series. The crappy part about that? I missed it all. Even with the rain delay. We're building a house and it's less than 2 weeks away from being done so the wife and I went to take a look at it. I got home, flipped the game on and it was pretty much already over as the Yankees were up 7-0. It was nice to see that the offense finally decided to show up this series, even though I missed it all. 8 runs on 13 hits. Yeah, that'll play. Here's some thoughts:

A.J. Burnett gets my game ball tonight. Really nice outing from him. He's now won 3 of his last 4 and seems to have gotten back on track for the most part. Over his last 5 starts he's 3-1, 27 IP, 24 H, 8 BB, 6 ER, 20 K, 2.00 ERA. If he keeps pitching like that everyone will forget about the little fib he told about falling and hurting his hand. If they haven't already that is. A.J. needs to step it up and keep this nice run going. His starts are a lot more important with Andy Pettitte on the DL.

Derek Jeter had a rough night at the dish. He went 0-5 and was the only Yankee without a hit. Jeet is definitely having a down year. When I think of Derek Jeter I don't think of a .274 hitter. Just when you think he's busted out of the slump he mixes in an oh-fer. To his credit he has done better recently, going 14-for-45 (.311) over his last 10 games. Hopefully the corner has been turned.

Mark Teixeira really puzzles me. I can't figure out how he can start so bad and then end up with MVP-like numbers. He entered the month of July hitting .231. His 2 hits tonight bumped his average up to .262. He's now hitting .377 this month with 7 HR and 24 RBI. That's a helluva month right there.

A-Rod is still stuck on 599 HRs. As long as he keeps knocking in runs he can stay at 599 for all I care. It's hard to believe that Alex has 82 RBI on the season. I hadn't check the leaderboard in awhile and was surprised to see he had the 2nd most RBI in all of MLB.

I thought it was absolutely hilarious that Girardi trucked Joba out there to pitch when the Yankees had an 8-run lead. If that doesn't send a message to Joba I don't know what will. It's evident that Girardi has no confidence in Joba right now and why should he? Why should anyone? He's been absolutely terrible. His ERA hasn't been below 4.75 since May 25th. God that's bad. It hasn't been below 4 since May 16th. I hope Joba has fun being the mop-up guy.

Sergio Mitre seems to be one-and-done as a Yankee SP. You won't hear me complaining about that.

Both the Rays and Red Sox won. It's going to be a dog fight the rest of the way. 3 days til the trade deadline. Not a lot of rumors floating around there. I'd like to see the Yanks shore up the bullpen and maybe a grab a decent bat. Nothing really seems to be in the works, but who knows? Things seem to manifest out of nowhere. I think the Yanks will do something. It wouldn't be the trade deadline if they didn't.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie