March 17, 2009

Mo makes debut, Yanks slug past Pirates

The Yankees rallied for six runs in the third inning and went on to win 9-2 over the Pirates tonight.

CC Sabathia gave up just one run over four innings - a big improvement from his last start.  Mariano Rivera followed CC with his first inning of the spring.  He struck out two in the perfect inning.  It's about time for Big Mo, but on the other hand, he normally doesn't need much time to get ready for the regular season.  He has plenty of games left, and I'm sure the Yanks will take it slow.

Hideki Matsui led the hitting barrage for the Yanks with a two-run double in the first and a two-run homer in the third inning.  This of course was just a response to my earlier post about him needing to impress me (hehe).  Full box score here.

You may notice in the box that our old friend Jose Tabata (part of trade for Xavier Nady) did some damage against us (two hits, a steal and a run).  Tabata's still young, but just think about the outfield overflow the Yankees would have if they still had him.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The yanks just released that Joba will replace mo if he goes down from injury. Just letting you know i'd like to hear what you think of this

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090318&content_id=4010534&vkey=news_nyy&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy

Lenny Neslin said...

Thanks for pointing this out.

I noticed the article made sure to be very careful about when exactly Joba would replace Mo:

"the New York Post reported on Wednesday -- citing three Yankees officials -- that the Yankees would likely look to Chamberlain as their contingency plan for the closer's role should Rivera suffer any significant setback."

If Rivera goes down with a big injury, the Yanks are screwed to be honest. I'm not doubting Joba as a closer, but I am saying that Joba is far more valuable to the team as a starter than a closer. Let's say Rivera does go down and Joba replaces him. Joba is going to have a ton of pressure on him to close games, and the Yanks will have to find a way to fill the void in the rotation. To put it simply, it would be chaos.

Another thing I saw interesting in the article was Joba's comment here:

"I don't really care," Chamberlain continued. "I love both roles, and they're two totally different roles. But at the same time, you attack people the same way and you get to pitch."

I was a little disappointed when I read this. I'd rather have a guy that has a preference on which role, because then I would feel that he has more of his heart in what he's doing. However, maybe this was just some BS for the media.

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