CC Sabathia is one of only 12 pitchers (since 1919) -- and the only Yankees pitcher -- to have allowed 6+ earned runs to the Red Sox, three games in a row. (Thanks to BRef)
The Yankees have one big starting pitcher, in all ways, in CC Sabathia. That pitcher can beat everybody except the Red Sox this season and got smacked around by them again Saturday at Fenway ... [I]t could be a problem down the road, the one that could run both these teams through their first American League Championship Series in seven years. ...
"When I'm right, I can beat anybody."
Just not the Red Sox and not this season. A.J. Burnett probably thinks he can beat anybody when he's right, too. ...
So now Sabathia, great big oversized Yankee ace, has given up more than six runs in a start three times this season. All against Boston. ...[H]is earned-run average against the Red Sox this season, four starts, is now 7.20. You know what those are? Burnett numbers, you bet. ...
Red Sox beat up the Yankees' best pitcher again Saturday. ... One more time against the Red Sox in 2011, he pitched like the lefthanded Burnett.
When the big guy took the mound Saturday at Fenway Park, there was so much positive Yankee karma enveloping him he could hardly breathe. ...
[T]he only team all year who has roughed Sabathia up is the Red Sox, wracking up six runs in each of his two most recent starts against them, and Saturday it was worse. ... Lifetime - including those two drubbings he absorbed against them in the 2007 ALCS for Cleveland, in which Boston pounded him for 17 hits and 12 earned runs in 10.1 innings - he's 6-11 with a 4.34 ERA.
None of this, of course, would seem to bode particularly well for the Yankees in their inevitable final showdown with the Red Sox come October when AL supremacy is really decided ...
Afterward, Joe Girardi was hard-pressed to explain Sabathia's continuing pratfalls against the Red Sox, other than to say: "I believe CC will turn it around," ...
It is no surprise they are dead-even atop the AL East Sunday, given the perennial talent and payroll gulf that exists in their division. What is a surprise to the unknowing is that those identical 69-43 records don't nearly tell the story of how dominant the Red Sox have been against the Yankees.
What if the sure thing, isn't?
What if after all these months of the Yankees worrying about everything that comes after CC Sabathia in the rotation, they actually have a very specific concern about their ace: Namely that their pitching Superman finds the Red Sox to be Team Kryptonite? ...
[I]t is hard to ignore how terrible the Yankees rotation has been against Boston this year, in general, and how woeful Sabathia has been, in particular. Because Sabathia is supposed to be the security blanket to an otherwise uncertain rotation. ... [T]hink about the degree of difficulty of beating Boston four times in seven games if the Yankees cannot get excellence from Sabathia. ...
In 11 games against Boston, Yankees starters are 0-9 with an 8.97 ERA, averaging a shade under five innings an outing. ...
Sabathia — their everyday life preserver — has failed to save them. He is 16-2 with a 2.11 ERA against every team that is not Boston, and 0-4 with a 7.20 ERA against the Red Sox. That is the difference between Cy Young and Anthony Young ... He is the first Yankee to lose four times in the same season to the Red Sox since Pat Dobson in 1975. ...
The safety net was supposed to be Sabathia. However, against Boston in 2011, the Yankees ace has been more A.J. than CC.
New York Daily News Poll, Saturday, 9:50 PM
New York Daily News Poll, Sunday, 12:00 PM
1 comment:
wracking up six runs
The Sox have done a lot of wracking to their opponents, but not to their runs. (Racking on the other hand....)
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