Ivan Nova is 7-0 since June 10th, with batters hitting .232/.283/.361 over the span. I don’t know how he’s done it, I just hope he keeps on doing it. He’s on the mound tonight in KC, who send Danny Duffy. Gardner is hitting ninth, with Jeter leading off. Comment away.
| NY Yankees | |
| D. Jeter ss | .282 |
| C. Granderson cf | .273 |
| M. Teixeira 1b | .249 |
| R. Cano 2b | .305 |
| N. Swisher rf | .269 |
| A. Jones dh | .246 |
| R. Martin c | .225 |
| E. Nunez 3b | .264 |
| B. Gardner lf | .285 |
| I. Nova | 3.85 |
| Kansas City | |
| A. Gordon lf | .298 |
| M. Cabrera cf | .311 |
| B. Butler dh | .284 |
| E. Hosmer 1b | .275 |
| J. Francoeur rf | .274 |
| J. Giavotella 2b | .333 |
| S. Perez c | .263 |
| M. Moustakas 3b | .186 |
| A. Escobar ss | .251 |
| D. Duffy | 4.97 |
31 replies on “The Other Ace: Yanks-Royals Gamer”
Damn. One bad pitch and it plates a runner. Nova’s been looking good to me, though. Has he always been able to hit 95 this regularly?
God. Another run. And he looked good again for most of the at-bat. BABIP is frowning on the Yankees this inning.
Great throw by Russell gets Francaeiour.
Two runs scored against us, but Nova looked good to me.
Yeah…BABIP is definitely frowning on us.
Robbie pounds the ball with the might of Thor…directly at the first baseman.
We loaded the bases and got nothing. Let’s not start that crap again, guys.
Quick 1-2-3 inning for Nova.
from SWB: Yanks go quietly in the 6th and A-Rod has been pulled. So he goes 1 for 3 with two line drives and an infield pop-out and 2 dropped balls in foul territory (one of them truly egregious) and one cleanly fielded groundout.
Two runners on (Grandy by a HBP. Teixeira by a walk), 1 out in the third. Robbie’s up. Let’s get it going, guys…
Robbie chases one high and outside and takes it to the opposite field. That’s a classic Vlad Guerrero kind of hit.
Grandy scores. 2-1. Still one out.
Swish (with a batting average now at .271, believe it or not) walks. Bases loaded again. But of course it’s loaded up for the bottom of the lineup.
Russell drives in Tex and Robbie! We’re up 3-2 now.
Inning over, no more runs. But Nova has a lead to work with now.
Swb: Brackman in to pitch the 8th. Listed as 6’10” and he looks it. Gets a K, a looooong fly-out, and fly-out to left. Almost 20-mph difference between his 91-mph fastball and a 7s-mph pitch that looked more like a curve than a change but not sure.
Dammit. Two runs in against us in the bottom of the third. And Nova isn’t looking good…
And now he’s just straight-up struggling.
Though he’s got some good stuff tonight, he’s making way too many mistakes. He’s had a good many 2 strike counts where he struggled to put away batters and ended up giving them something much to hittable.
Nova’s streak of awesome starts is officially over.
He had quite a run. Now we have to hope our offense can overcome. Bring it.
Brett’s bunting has really gotten a lot better.
Well…it had to, though. Steal! Steal! Steal!
Jeter doubles in Gardner!
Granderson bunts? It worked, but…this is the guy who has hit about 61 home runs in the last week.
These freaking crickets in Kansas are irrriitatting..
Tex drives in Jeter. 5-5.
New pitcher? This night is destined to be a bullpen slogfest.
Err…
Did Yost get thrown out? Yes, he did. And they are not going for a new pitcher after all.
Robbie could have walked 4 times in this at bat already…
12 pitches in this at bat now.
Who needs walks when you can hit one out?
8-5.
Nova’s back out with a lead again. He can’t turn this into a good start, but he can restore some confidence (both his own and Girardi’s in him)
Again. The damn crickets. Aaaarrrgh, I want to stomp them. Or feed them to fish.
This team plays so much better when I am not watching.
Mark Teixeira is quite spry. Nice play.
Mo closes it out with two k’s sandwiched around a nifty hockey-grab comebacker.
Ball game. Yanks 9, KC 7.
Those crickets were the worst. I thought my head was going to explode.
So we are back in 1st? Amazing. I have no idea how this team is doing it. I guess the Sox aren’t as good against the rest of baseball as they are against us and vice versa.
This team really is amazing me. The rotation has been held together by duct tape and glue (and stem cells) beyond their aCCe. The lineup is trending old and injured but excellent when healthy with the young crop adding serious firepower. It’s all adding up to the best run diff in baseball.
krueg, here you go. Both teams against everyone but each other:
Yankees 72-36 .667 WPCT (109 win pace)
Red Sox 64-45 .587 WPCT (95 win pace)
All that said, having watched five in my lifetime, this does not at all feel like a championship club. The 2009 team at least had all the comebacks on their side. If anything this feels very much like the 2002-2005 teams – thin in pitching with good-to-great offenses.
The Sox, though, feel like the 2004-07 clubs with much better starting pitching and an offense that can go very quiet at times. Yes, I know that the Sox were looking otherworldly for a while, but man, their lineups the last few days have been THIN. With Crawford and Drew being awful, and the catcher and shortstop positions going cold, any injury to Youkilis, Pedroia, and Ortiz means they have a lineup four deep, like the last few days. And with AGon’s power outage, they look very vulnerable against decent pitching.
By the way, the last time the Yankees lost the season series to the Sox?
2004.
They also won the division then.
This feels very much like that season. They didn’t have CC (but then his performances against the Sox means that he may not be all that important) but their rotation was a suckfest. Sure, Garcia and Colon have been better than Vazquez, Lieber, Brown, and Contreras, but that’s a difference in degree, not kind.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/2004.shtml#team_pitching::none
Nova and Hughes are capable of more, but I wouldn’t bet on it and I don’t expect both would get starts in the post-season, even as neither Garcia or Burnett should.