Last night the Yankees dropped their opening game to the Rays with Bartolo Colon taking the loss. Although the Yanks have lost 4 of their last 5, I don’t think it’s time to get in a panic but rather just finish this last series before the All-Star break strong.
You could tell right from the top of the first inning last night that Colon was missing something and it could be a tough night for the Yankees. Colon got himself in trouble early because of problems finding the location on his pitches. The problem with his control was so bad that he actually walked a season high 4 batters. Even when he wasn’t walking batters, he was having problems with his fastballs which didn’t have any movement. This in turn, caused Colon to give up 10 hits and 5 runs over 5 2/3 innings. If you have watched Colon pitched this year, you would have noticed his 2 seamer has been incredible and fooling batters with rapid movement. Even his 4 seamer had some movement to it in the past. Last night though, all his pitches were flat and sitting right in the zone ideal for batters to hit.
Hopefully Colon got a bad start out of his system and can get back to pitching as usual. I doubt the bad start had anything to do with his hamstring injury which sent him to the DL a few weeks back and it didn’t seem like Colon was having stamina issues, so I think we can just chalk it up to a bad day.
It wasn’t all Colon’s fault either last night as the Yankees offense didn’t produce against Niemann who cruised through 7 1/3 innings. Although Cano had a home run to continue his hitting streak to 11 games, the power hitters in their lineup had an awful night. Between Granderson, Texeira and Arod, they went 0-10!
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| Galea is the weasley looking fellow on the left |
Speaking of Arod… the steroids issues never seem to go away. Yesterday Arods doctor Anthony Galea took a plea deal with the Federal Government for smuggling HGH. Rumors around MLB are swirling that part of the deal for Galea is to meet with MLB investigators and name names. It would be similar to what happened with Kirk Radomski a few years back. Galea was rumored to have worked with Arod, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Tiger Woods just to name a few. Hopefully any investigation with MLB can take place after the season and Arod can focus on the game.
On the other side of the diamond, it was like the Rays were a totally different team from last season. Well, that’s exactly what they are. The Rays have lost considerable talent from last season but have done a pretty good job of staying in the pennant race. They lost Soriano, Pena, Crawford, Bartlett, Balfour, Garza, Wheeler and Benoit. Although some of these guys didn’t have great numbers last season, each one of their names are fairly recognizable as they all were contributors to the Rays. I got to hand it to Joe Maddon as he really knows what he’s doing. It’s too bad the Rays are in the AL East otherwise I would have to root for them.
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