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| Photo: NyDailyNews.com |
Yankees win in the bottom 10th, from a walk-off solo homerun by Russell Martin, whose had a strange season, but continues to fight and not give up.
Again -- Martin has had a strange year. His overall numbers aren't pretty, but he's gotten a lot of big hits this season.
This was Martin's second walk-off homerun of the year -- the first one was off the Mets at Yankee Stadium.
You don't know what you're gonna get out of Martin when he's up on the plate. At times, he'll strikeout on a ugly pitch that way out of the strikezone, or he'll hit an opposite field homerun that makes him look dangerous in plate. And when he hits those opposite field hits, I think to myself: 'Man, this guy should be better than what he is'.
I always liked Martin. I like how scrappy he is. I'm surprise Yankee fans don't praise him as much, since they always complain about not having the scrappy player and always having these big boppers who only hit homers.
Even though he's batting .205, with 17-homers and 47-ribbies, I think we can all say Martin is having a good season.
C.C Sabathia: With Rafael Soriano blowing the save, Sabathia doesn't get the win, but I still take his performance as big, big, big positive, because he needed a well-pitches game like that in the worse way.
Sabathia fastball velocity and slider was a huge plus in today's game. Especially his velocity on his fastball. We were all worried that Sabathia may have lost a couple of mileage on the fastball. But I knew that Sabathia was just rusty, since he's been on and off the D.L.
Most important thing about this game, was that he pitched well against a winning team. C.C hasn't pitched well or beaten a team over .500 in a long time. Even though he didn't get the win, he pitched brilliantly against a power-hitting A's team.
Sabathia's pitches looked heavy; maybe his sinker was working effectively -- but I think it was his velocity that made his off-speed pitches look THAT much better. It was big difference since last Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays when he has no fastball. Tonight, his stuff looked heavy. He was getting strikeouts and groundouts.
Just a sigh a of relief to see Sabathia pitch well. With Andy Pettitte and Ivan Nova back, that is huge.
When C.C had that dicey 8th inning, the idea of him having a complete game went out the window. I really wanted him to pitch the ninth and close it out, because I knew Soriano pitched a lot this week. You'd figure he'd be out of gas. That's why I wanted C.C to go nine. Didn't happen -- and we saw what happened.
Rafeal Soriano: I really hope not too many Yankee fans complained about Soriano's blown save. Just like Soriano has to save games, some fans need to save their complaints.
That at-bat to Brandon Moss -- who hit the game-tying homer off Soriano -- Soriano threw a slider right before the homerun, that Moss almost missed. Instead of throwing a fastball, Soriano throws another slider that ended up in the second deck in right-field.
Soriano got too slider-happy; and he's been slider-happy the whole season. But he needs to show the fastball more. That's what Mariano Rivera told him when his blew that save to the Blue Jays.
Yankees Win: Big win -- like they all are -- for the Yankees. Now, if they can get these next two games from the A's, which would mean a sweep, that would be huge with the rest of the schedule coming up. But, you gotta worry about tomorrow's game, first.
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