MLB: Day Seventy
Posted on | June 12, 2007 | No Comments
The Rocket has launched successfully.
On Saturday Roger Clemens finally made his debut for the New York Yankees. Clemens earned the win, too, as he and the Yanks beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 9-3. Clemens started off a little slowly but he settled down and pitched for a solid six innings.
In those six innings Clemens gave up five hits and three runs. He also walked two but he struck out seven batters. Clemens looked solid and that is obviously a great thing for the Yankees.
The best thing for the Yankees, though, is their turnaround in overall morale and their play over the last couple of weeks. Amazing how the return of a pitcher who is over forty can inject life into a team that seemed as if they might underachieve for the entire season.
I’ll admit that I was one of the people who didn’t think Clemens would make a difference, at least not a big enough difference to make the Yankees a lot better. But I underestimated the psychological effect this would have on this team.
So, Clemens got the run support he needed in the win. The Yankees won 9-3. And they had a 6-3 lead when Clemens left the game after the sixth.
The Yankees will now try to get a sweep of the Pirates when the two teams wrap-up their series on Sunday. The Yankees will also have another chance to lessen the gap between themselves and the Boston Red Sox to under ten games.
But Boston is doing their best to answer the Yankees challenge. The Red Sox will be going for their own sweep over the Arizona Diamondbacks. Certainly the Red Sox don’t want to see the Yankees closing in on them. Of course there’s still a huge lead for the Red Sox (ten and a half games) but there’s a lot of season left too.
The Yankees are only five and a half games out of a Wildcard spot right now. They do have a few teams in front of them but there’s so much season to be played, the Yanks will have plenty of opportunity to bypass every team.
This is why managers always say that’s it too early to look at any standing right now. There’s just too much season left to be played and to many crazy things that could happen.
For now, we’ll just wait and see what happens tomorrow when the Yankees and the Red Sox each go for a sweep.
Related posts:
- MLB: Day Seventy-Six
- MLB: Day Seventy-Five
- MLB: Day One Hundred and Seventy-Seven
- MLB: Day Ninety-Three
- MLB: Day One Hundred and Seventy-Nine
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