Yankees beat O’s 7-4 as Burnett turns in another solid outing

It seems a couple of days off did the Yankee offense some good, as the Bombers picked up seven runs on 11 hits en route to at the Stadium on Wednesday. (6.1IP, 7H, 4ER, 2BB, 5K, 5 groundouts and 7 flyouts) mostly cruised through the first six innings (the exception being a 31-pitch second), putting up zero after zero, but began to tire by the seventh, as a two-run bomb got the Orioles on the scoreboard and a two-run shot two batters later got the O’s back in the game, ruining what had been a pretty stellar outing by Burnett up to that point. I’d have yanked Burnett after walking the number-nine hitter, , but I suppose the staff was trying to continue to rebuild his confidence and hoped he’d be able to get out of the inning further unscathed. I suppose with a five-run lead that’s a reasonable gambit, but a clearly tiring Burnett facing — a player who has historically crushed the Yankees — probably should have resulted in A.J. being patted on the back and sent to the showers. But I digress.

finished out the seventh with a strikeout and groundout, and and came on to close things out with a scoreless inning apiece.

One thing I loved about Burnett in this outing was that his four-seamer appeared to have a ton of late rise, resulting in a slew of lazy pop-ups. I went back over the Gameday data and counted 6 flyouts via the four-seamer. Per Brooks, his average vertical break for the pitch was 10.82 inches, compared with 8.56 inches on average for all of 2010, and so the numbers certainly back up the notion that Burnett had a very effective rising four-seamer in this start (save for the Wieters home run).

The offense didn’t waste any time in this one, as announced his return to the lineup with a three-run blast in the first inning, his fourth home run of the year. By the way, since you were wondering, Alex didn’t hit his fourth home run last year until May 14, his 34th game of the season. It’s been an absolute joy to watch Alex do his thing thus far in the early going. Alex also walked and singled, bringing his triple slash up to a mouth-watering .355/.474/.806 (also, h/t to my good friend — and birthday boy — , who pointed out to me this morning that A-Rod leads all of MLB in wOBA, at .531). I don’t care if it’s only nine games and these numbers are completely unsustainable; we should all enjoy this while we can.

Mark Teixeria broke his hitless streak, picking two hits up, and had two hits of his own. snapped his hitless streak as well with a solo shot in the 5th inning. In fact, the only Yankee starter without a hit in this one was .

All in all a great game for the Yankees, as Burnett pitched well for a third straight outing, and the offensive outburst never left things in doubt. As exciting as pitching duels are, I’ll happily take an early seven-run lead that allows the starter to pound the strikezone and get through the first six innings mostly unscathed as often as the team can do it.