The New York
Yankees could not feel better about themselves heading into the All-Star break,
with a commanding lead in the American League East standings after another
Boston beat-down.
Granted, the
Yankees’ play was pretty sloppy at times this weekend, with Hiroki Kuroda
giving up the 5-run lead his offense staked him to on Friday night and Phil
Hughes unable to pitch out of the mess his defense put him in during Saturday’s
double-header nightcap. But they took three out of four games against the Boston
Red Sox after getting strong performances by Freddy Garcia and Ivan Nova and a
resurgent Mark Teixeira, who wisely decided not to further escalate his feud
with a nut like Vicente Padilla.
More
surprisingly, they got a turn-back-the-clock performance by Andruw Jones, who
has been terrific subbing for the injured Brett Gardner all year, but really
stepped up his game against the Red Sox this weekend. He hit four Monster home
runs, constantly breaking the hearts of Saux fans anytime they thought their
team might finally have a leg up on the hated Yankees. But even more impressive
to me was his outstanding defense, including slamming against the Green Monster
to make a terrific, rally-killing catch, which immediately conjured up images
of a young Jones patrolling centerfield for the Atlanta Braves.
So despite
all their injuries and lackluster play during the first six weeks of the
season, the Yankees find themselves comfortably in first place with a 7-game
lead over the Baltimore Orioles, nearly 10 games up over the Saux (which, let’s
face it, is the only team that all Yankee fans truly care about regardless of
their problems) and the best record in baseball.
I hope Joe
Girardi and his squad enjoy their All-Star break vacation. After their first-half
performance, they’ve definitely earned it.
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