Burnett strong as Yanks hang on to 4-3 victory; series win

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

gave the Yankees exactly what they needed on Thursday afternoon — 6 innings of two-run ball — and , and once again came in to shut the door after Burnett departed, preserving a 4-3 Yankee victory over the Twins, and earning the Bombers their second straight series win to start the season.

While Burnett wasn’t lights-out, he deserves a lot of credit for not completely unraveling in his shaky 4th inning, in which he gave up three doubles (to , and ) that plated two Twins runs and erased a 1-0 Yankee lead. After Burnett bore down, the Yankees battled right back in the bottom of the 4th, as an doubled plated , a groundout plated and a bloop single plated Jones. As wonderful as the home runs have been, it was nice to see the Yankees scratch out some runs the old-fashioned way, especially since this was the first game of the season with zero Yankee home runs.

Burnett retired six of his final seven batters faced, and finished the day with 5 Ks and 2 walks. He had a great fastball — averaging 92.4, maxing out at 93.7 and worth -1.5597 linear weights — and solid sinker (-0.6115), though his change (0.6074) and curve (0.9374) left something to be desired.

The 3rd Minnesota run came around to score in the 7th due to a missed call by the umpires — was awarded first base on a hit by pitch despite squaring to bunt, which should have been a strike — and a throwing error on Casilla’s steal attempt enabled Casilla to get to third and score on a groundout.

was able to redeem himself with a scoreless eighth — though he did give up some rather scary fly balls — and Mo pitched a one-two-three ninth, though came quite close to tying things up.

Though he ended up taking the loss and produced a pretty ugly line (5IP, 4ER, 3BB, 5K), I still have to give credit to , who had the Yankees completely fooled on his changeup (seven swings-and-misses out of 20, -0.8330 linear weights). Unfortunately they were all over his fastball (1.4180 linear weights), and with an average speed of 91.7 it looks like Liriano is yet another hurler awaiting the return of 2-3mph on his four-seamer.

This was a much-needed bounceback win after the bullpen blew the game on Tuesday, and after so many years of sluggish Aprils under it’s quite satisfying seeing the Yankees start the year at 4-2 for the second straight season (prior to 2010 the last time they started off better than 2 games over .500 in their first six was in 2003, when they began 5-1).