The Yankee Clipper: We're Going Streaking

The Yankees have hit their soft part of their schedule and after taking 3 of 4 against the Indians, the Yankees just finished off a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles. After the bats had gone silent for a few weeks, health has come back to the Yankees and so has their Bronx Bomber persona. Those bats mixed with great pitching has allowed the Yankees to take advantage and beat up on bad teams. Let's take a look at how we got here:

1. Javy Vazquez, Curtis Granderson, and a break in Game 1. ESPN's TMI blog summarized why Javier Vazquez won and it was pretty simple: he threw first pitch strikes (73% of the time), he kept the ball down (set season-highs with 64 pitches down, 9 ground ball outs, and 52.9% of balls in play resulted in ground-balls), and he got swings and misses (27.5%, his second-highest mark this year). I know that this was "only the Orioles", but pitching is really that simple: keep the ball down, throw first pitch strikes and get swings and misses. As Mark Feinsand of The Daily News points out, the one run that Vazquez gave up was on a pitch up to Corey Patterson. The overall numbers are ugly, but since they skipped his start in early May, Vazquez has pitched in 5 games has a 2.77 ERA and has a .202/.270/.348 line against. Granderson is also out to prove people wrong by hitting lefties and he continued that movement in Game 1 by hitting a home run. As LoHud's Chad Jennings pointed out, Joba Chamberlain also bounced back nicely. And a costly error by Miguel Tejada gave the Yankees the extra runs needed to seal a 3-1 win.
2. Phil Hughes, Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher and Granderson in Game 2. I was at this game and wrote about it from there. ESPN's Buster Olney gives us more details about why Hughes won: "He held Orioles hitters to just 1-for-15 after the count got to two strikes, including 0-for-9 against his fastball. Hughes registered five of his seven strikeouts with the fastball on the night. Hughes challenged Orioles hitters with his fastball up in the zone with success. Hughes got four of his five strikeouts on the fastball on pitches in the upper third of the strike zone. Hughes went to three balls on just one hitter and to a 2-0 count on only two hitters."
3. Today was about CC Sabathia returning to form and A-Rod and Brett Gardner getting in on the power game. CC Sabathia wasn't great today, but what he did well was keep runners off base. The Yankees have been getting great pitching from AJ Burnett, Phil Hughes and Andy Pettitte but this team really took off last season when the hefty lefty was at his best. As Mike from Yankeeist writes, the Yankees made it a lot more interesting than it needed to be, especially Mariano Rivera in the 9th inning but Jay from Fack Youk points out that despite the fact that the Orioles brought the tying run to the plate it never felt like the sweep was going to get away from the Yankees. The Yankees have to be happy to see Gardner and A-Rod starting to swing the bats well again.
4. Mark Teixeira and Francisco Cervelli are ice cold... Mark Teixeira still hasn't seem to get the memo that April is over. His .215/.332/.376 line and extremely subpar .319 wOBA have not been exactly what the doctor ordered out of the #3 hole. He's been a victim of bad luck (.225 BAbip) but he has to start hitting at some point. Fransisco Cervelli has been a very good backup for the Yankees, but playing everyday has shown some chinks in the armor. The Cisco Kid was hitting everything through the first month and a half but was 0 for the Orioles series.
5. ...but Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson, and Nick Swisher are making up for them. Robinson Cano is a definite MVP candidate, leading the league in hitting now after a 17-game hit streak and smacking the ball all over the yard. As Rebecca from This Purist Bleeds Pinstripes writes, Cano has been some kind of monster. Curtis Granderson has come off the DL hot hitting .417 with 5 XBH and has allowed the Yankees to move their most consistent hitter and on-base guy, Nick Swisher, up to the #2 hole (Jorge Posada coming off the DL has helped that cause as well). Swisher's .418 wOBA is higher than Albert Pujols, Evan Longoria or Ryan Braun. This lineup is still missing Nick Johnson, but even with this structure they are pretty unstoppable when healthy.

Next up for the Yankees are the surprising Toronto Blue Jays. I thought the AL East would be a three team race with a young fourth team showing a lot of promise--but I thought that 4th team was going to be the Orioles. The Yankees will certainly see if the Blue Jays are for real. Ed Price of MLB FanHouse points out that the Yankees will play 1/6 of their final 108 games against the Jays which is all 18 games. If the Jays are for real, we'll see it soon. The Yankees hope that it's just that the Jays haven't played the Yankees yet. After Toronto, it's Baltimore and then Houston so this is the time for the Yankees to rack up some wins. The quest for 28 (and the 5-game winning streak) continues in Toronto.

Side Note: It's been quite busy at work lately and the blog has taken a bit of a hit. I apologize for that and hope to get back to blogging a lot more as the summer heats up. Thanks for sticking with us and if there are any guest bloggers waiting out there, please e-mail me and let me know.


Picture from The Star-Ledger