It’s always great to go into the Bronx and beat the Yankees? Who doesn’t like putting that self righteous franchise a few pegs lower down on the totem pole? The only thing better than a Yankees loss is a Cowboys loss, but that’s a blog post for another time.
Matt Harrison took the mound, and continues to post like a guy you wouldn’t expect “Matt Harrison” to post like. While he didn’t have dominant stuff, he did certainly manage to get the job done. Just look at his line:
8IP, 7H, 3BB, 2R (1ER), 3K, 104P.
That’s a great line. While he did allow more hits/walks than innings pitched, he was most certainly helped out by the defense, which turned not one or two, but SIX double plays behind Matt. The first one was by Alex Rodriguez, which prompted me at home to declare out loud, “The Chiller is back”! Arod’s having a great spring, but not this game. He started it off by grounding into a double play. The only better thing than that was the called strikeout of Arod last October.
Anyway, Harrison continued to look like a brilliant pitcher. After three outings, I’m starting to think that this might be the new Matt Harrison, and making the Mark Teixeira trade with Atlanta look even more brilliant on our side.
The other really interesting line from this game is the fact that the Rangers scored five runs to win the game. However, the team combined had just four hits. But, the Yankees allowed SEVEN walks, which is where the bulk of the action came from. On the hit side, all we had was a double by Adrian Beltre & Michael Young, and singles by Michael Young & Nelson Cruz. That was IT. Pretty spartan offense, but with all the walks, you could make the point that Ivan Nova gave it to us, as five of the walks were on his ledger.
Neftali Feliz gave up a run in the ninth to make it a little closer, but despite the lack of a real offensive attack, it always felt like our game. Which is always ALWAYS good against the Yankees.
