The Bronx, NY – The Yankees have been playing some halfway decent baseball recently. They took two out of three in Beantown before coming home and winning three out of four against the first place Detroit Tigers. The Yankees beat the Tigers with some top notch pitching performances. The Tigers rolled out three Cy Young winners in the series but it was the Bombers starters who looked like the award winners. And the Yankees needed those pitching performances since they can’t hit worth a lick.
The bombers have been involved in too many tight, low scoring games of late. With the exception of Sunday night’s 8-run explosion in Boston, the Yankees have been lucky to score two runs per game. Yesterday Shane Greene pitched like a steroids era Roger Clemens, throwing eight innings of five hit baseball. Offensive powerhouse Stephen Drew drove in the only run of the game. Some of the Yankee bats are starting to wake up. Brett Gardner has been the Yanks’ best hitter over the last couple of weeks. Jacoby Ellsbury is picking up the pace also. Great plays by Mookie Betts in Boston and by Ezequiel Carrera in center field at the stadium this week robbed Ellsbury of a couple of extra base hits and a few RBI. Those hits will start to fall for Ellsbury down the stretch. Hopefully Teixeira can stay healty down the stretch (he missed Thursday’s game with a boo-boo on his pinky). The Yanks have been doing just enough to win lately. But the bats will need to do more because eventually the team will stop stepping in sh*t with these pitching performances from All-Star pitchers like Shane Greene, Chris Capuano, and Brandon McCarthy (No relation to Short Matt). The Yankees are 5 games behind the Orioles in the division and are currently tied for one of the Wild Card spots. But they’ve got company in that race so they’ll have to keep winning.
The New York Football Giants played their first preseason game last weekend in the Hall of Fame Game against the old enemy, the Buffalo Bills. The Giants won the game and Eli Manning had a typical performance with a few completions and a lost fumble. But there was a bigger loss for the Giants last weekend. David Wilson was forced to retire due to a re-aggravation of the neck injury he suffered last season. The 23 year old had a lot of potential and would surely have figured prominently in the Giants’ offense. But the bum neck will keep Wilson on the sidelines forever.
Wilson seemed like a good kid and, fumble issues aside, was a proficient running back. He was never going to be Barry Sanders, but who is? For now the Giants are going to have to ride Rashad Jennings as their number one running back, which doesn’t bode well for the G-Men. Eli will have to throw a lot. Maybe Tom Coughlin will invoke his inner Bill Walsh and go with a west coast offense. It should be an interesting season for the Giants.
