MLB: Day Thirty-Seven
The New York Yankees love to be in the spotlight and this season they’ve found all sorts of reasons to be making headlines. On Sunday the big news was Roger Clemens. Earlier in the season it was the amazingly fast start of Alex Rodriguez, or the poor start of the Yankees, or all the injuries to the pitching staff. Partially lost in all of this is the bad start by Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera.
For the past several years, Rivera has been absolutely lights-out for opposing hitters. He’s always been so successful that teams know that if they trail the Yankees heading into the 9th inning then the game is over. Rivera has always been that good.
But he’s been very hittable so far this season. In fact, against the Mariners on Monday, Rivera gave-up a game winning homerun. It wasn’t another blown save opportunity (the game was tied) but it was a loss. Rivera’s ERA is now 8.33 and his record is 1-3. Not exactly the stats one would expect the supposed best closer in baseball to have.
Rivera seems to have as much velocity as ever. His cutter seems to be doing what he wants it to. The problem is that it’s not going where he wants it to go. He’s leaving the ball up and over the plate and opposing hitters are mashing the ball. In fact, in the first month or so of the season, Rivera has almost given up as many homeruns as he did last year during the entire season. Just as the Yankees seem to take care of one thing (landing Clemens for a starting pitcher) another problem begins to spring up.
In the National League, Brad Penny continued to pitch brilliantly for the Dodgers. The Dodgers beat the Florida Marlins 6-1. Penny pitched 7 scoreless innings for the Dodgers. His ERA is a remarkable 1.39 and his record is 4-0. Penney and the rest of the Dodgers are sitting atop the National League West.
The Dodgers will continue their series with the Marlins and then move on to play the Cincinnati Reds for the weekend.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Detroit Tigers will look to continue their winning streak as will the Milwaukee Brewers. These two teams may be playing the best baseball of any team in the Majors. The Tigers will be playing the Seattle Mariners while the Brewers will be playing the Washington Nationals.
