Yankees game story
By KAT O’BRIEN
Kat.Obrien@Newsday.com
ANAHEIM, Calif. – On Monday, hours before the Yankees would lose a lopsided 12-1 game, one longtime Yankee questioned the effort of some players.
The veteran wondered aloud if players were still turning in top effort, or if perhaps some had thrown in the towel for the season and were merely going through the motions. If the latter were the case, he would be furious. When asked about that possibility on Tuesday, some veteran players vehemently disagreed. They then went out and showed some spark in a 7-1 Yankees win over the Angels.
The game would not have appeared to be a perfect setup for a Yankees victory. The Angels could have clinched the American League West Division if they beat the Yankees and the Rangers lost to the Mariners, and they were surely eager to pop some champagne. Also, the Yankees had Alfredo Aceves making his first major league start while Angels starter Ervin Santana was 15-5 with a 3.23 ERA. Yet Aceves was outstanding and multi-run homers by Alex Rodriguez and Johnny Damon chased Santana.
The Yankees are 8 ½ games out in the wild card chase.
“He was great,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said of Aceves. “Seven strong innings, and we probably could have sent him out for the eighth.”
Before the game, captain Derek Jeter, in particular, took exception to the idea that any players had given up: “If somebody said that, they should identify themselves.”
Jeter, who had two hits and passed Babe Ruth for second on the Yankees’ all-time hit list with 2,520, said he believes everyone is playing at top effort. He seemed most bothered that someone would make an assertion to the contrary without attaching their name to the sentiment, saying: “You’ve got to give me someone to disagree with. Like I said, if somebody said that, they should identify themselves. That’s the way I look at it.”
In Jeter’s eyes, if you’re going to accuse members of your own team of not trying as hard as they are capable, it should be a public accusation.
Said Damon: “I don’t know who would say that. We’re going out, playing hard. We’re trying as hard as we can. It just seems like nothing is going our way right now.”
Damon in particular responded to the veteran assertions with fervor. He hit two homers (his second multi-home run game this year) Tuesday and knocked in three runs, snapping out of a 1-for-20 skid.
On Tuesday, the veteran had no cause for concern. Aceves kept the Angels off-balance, while the Yankees had at least one hit in six of the first seven innings. Aceves was outstanding. A spring signee out of the Mexican League, he shot up through the minor leagues this year and is off to an impressive start.
Aceves (1-0) gave up just one run on five hits in seven innings. He did not walk anybody. The 25-year-old righthander, whose family came in from Mexico for the game, earned his first major league win and made it look easy. He retired nine of the first 10 batters he faced, and did not give up a run until the sixth inning.
Aceves was totally lowkey after the game, saying in Spanish: “I’m calm. It’s like a step. I’m not thinking about my past or my future. I’m just thinking about my present.”
Aceves’s parents, Alfredo Aceves Sr. (a former first baseman in the Mexican League) and Josefina Martinez Aceves, were more excited. His dad said: “I always knew he was going to get to the major leagues because of his work. He was working hard everyday.”
Brian Bruney and Damaso Marte each pitched a scoreless inning for the Yankees.
Offensively, the Yankees took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on Xavier Nady’s RBI double. They stretched that to 4-1 in the top of the sixth, as Rodriguez hit a three-run homer to right-centerfield to score Jeter and Abreu. Damon hit a two-run homer in the seventh to knock Santana out, and added a solo home run off Justin Speier in the ninth.
Jeter was much more concerned with the Yankees’ win than the face he had passed Ruth. He did say, though: “It kind of sounds funny, I guess. … I know I joke around that I’m old, but I’m not that old.”
One reason a person might question the effort level or at least the approach is the Yankees have seemingly been spinning to losses in short order. The three games in the weekend series in Seattle averaged two hours, 30 minutes. Monday’s loss lasted only 2:57 despite 12 runs by the Angels and a mid-game fight.
Bobby Abreu, who is among the top five in the majors in pitches per plate appearance, said the short games were not due to a lack of effort: “We’re still playing hard, giving 100 percent. Those were just situations with the pitcher where people have to just go up there and hack.”
The veteran who worried that some people had quit had no cause for concern last night. Before the game, Mariano Rivera said players should never quit, but he did not want to add to anyone else’s comments by chiming in, so he said: “I prefer not to have any comment about that. I see the guys trying as hard as they’ve been trying all year.”
That looked true last night.
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Comments (16)
Kat, you keep alluding to this "veteran" -if it's not Mo and it's a longtime Yankee, it has to be either Jeter, Pettitte, Giambi (which I would find comical), or Mussina. My bet is on the last one.
Never mind, take out Jeter. It's so Andy or Moose.
As I commented the other day. I believe the pedigrees of the starters for the Yankees should dismiss any give up from these guys. Yankee fans must face the facts no starting pitching puts much pressure on hitting and fielding.
There are many reasons why this team has not won often enough. This winter will be the opt. for the GM and the Stienbrenners to fix it. 13 starting pitchers, 4 catchers, 4 centerfielders, the list goes on. The team has been struggling with the consistency at the plate and in the field.
MM
It's a Kat and Mouse game in reference to the "veteran" player that whined about his teammates.
The "O'Brien Code" in a sense.
Here's a clue from yesterday's pre-game report after Sully posed the "Who's the crabby veteran" question to her.
*Andy Pettitte is very frustrated with his second half, but hopes to have a good game tomorrow"
The only thing I'll add to that is....Left handed pitchers are nuts.
I obviously have no idea if it's Andy or not, but I don't think that what you copied and pasted is necessarily in response to someone's question about who the "veteran" is. I'd be surprised if Andy WAS satisfied with his own second half of the season, considering how awful he's been since July.
Did Newsday finally abandon that FUBAR'ed posting system they ran out? I hope they didn't have to pay anything for that!
W never got to use the service, and I purposely sabotague the Mets Live Blog in frustration.
So without turning into drooling fanboys/fangirls as some did over the earlier crop, we could take a measure of optimism from the performance of Aceves last night.
At 25 he's physically mature and having been brought through successive levels of IP's for several years he'll be ready for a full load next year. And he seems to have command of his secondary pitches. Right there are some reasons to see this debut as a bit different.
Was it on this board that someone doubted his true age? I think his family is well known to baseball-watchers in Mexico as his father played for years in the Mexican League and his older brother played in the US in the minors for quite a while in another organization, not to mention Alfredo himself was first signed by Toronto. So there would probably be too much visibility for a big discrepancy to get past scouts at this point.
Be careful when you say..'Physically mature" around here, there is another interpretation for that phrase. Just kidding, lol.
So where have all the posters gone? Driven off by the team or the TypeKey experiment?
The Sunday night Sept 21st game should be covered by YES. I know it’s in ESPN’s contract but I don’t want to listen to those 2 mono-tone Anti-Yankees self-flagellating windbags blowhard about the last night in Ye old Stadium.
Michael Kay should be covering it --- with appearances by all our favorite announcers and pin-striped guests.
The game should be a YES archive game without Joe Morgan stuttering and the other guy naming Chicago locker room attendants from 1960. I'm a Yankee fan and they are NOT.
I turn on 880 and listen to Suzyn & John and watch the ESPN coverage muted whenever I can find an AM radio. This game (being our last at home --- we’re not seeing the post-season this year) should be Kay & Singleton & Paullie and John with Reggie & Yogi all the rest of our hometown boys.
ESPN should cover for the rest of the country --- New York Yankees fans should get NY Yankee coverage.
Lynne,
Those Yankee announcers....well they suck too! If the Yanks want to give back all the national TV money they got then I'm sure that YES can do the game which the rest of the nation could care less about. Then you can hear Kay and Singleton Oh and Ah over every Yankee step taken and act like no one else in the history of the world can throw, catch or hit a baseball.
And if you can stomache Suzyn Waldman and John Sterling, then the ESPN guys should be like listening to angels sing!
Lets face it...this year the Yanks got more national coverage than they deserved. You should be thankful of that...not annoyed by it.
It's so funny...
Yankee fans think the media is anti Yankee and when you leave New York everyone says "The Media fawns over the Yankees"
I guess they are doing it right
Totally agree, Sully.
One of the biggest myths in Yankeeland is that "ESPN is an anti-Yankee network."
Puh-leez.
The truth of the matter is that ESPN is both pro-Yankees and pro-Red Sox because they get more positive coverage than anyone else.
It's not even close.
Yankee fans call it NESPN and Red Sox fans often call it YES Network II.
Nudge,
I don't think they assign national TV coverage by whether you deserve it, but by whether anybody wants to WATCH you deserving it (or not deserving it). NYY gets lots of coverage because lots of people watch when they're on. No other reason. If that changes, you'll see the coverage shrink.
Diane,
Not the case at all. Games are picked on an "expectation" ofaudience based on what games are "expected" to be important. In this case no one is caring about a Yankee team floundering into the golf season so the ratings will be a big disappointment for the network. Let me see.....would the people around the country rather see the Yankees playing AA players in a meaningless game......or the Dodgers trying to clinch a playoff spot?
I know Yankee fans think everyone is excited to see their"future" players but since none of them ever seem to work out I think no one outside of Yankeeland gives a hoot!
Unless they want to watch the Yanks get pounded to gain a good laugh.