Even Soriano is happy after nine straight wins.

The Yankees extended their winning streak to an impressive nine games in the fashion to which they’ve become accustomed: Unbelievable pitching from starters and relievers, lots of home runs, and no hits with runners in scoring position. Sunday’s game was unusual. To look at the box score one might think that was dominating and the offense was somewhat dormant. The impression I got from watching this game, however, was that the offense was also a bit unlucky and Nova benefited from a deeper ballpark than Yankee Stadium.

The Bombers scored their runs on a sac fly (Tex had three hits on the day, two for doubles), solo home runs from and and a passed ball. That was more than enough, but the Yankees left runs on the table. The Bombers loaded the bases in the first inning and had runners on second and third with just one out in the sixth inning and came out of each situation with a total of one run (Tex’s sacrifice). The Yankees were one situational hit shy of blowing this game open.

Nova, meanwhile, continued the recent trend of dominance from a Yankee starter. He tossed 7.2 innings of one run baseball, allowing seven hits and walking just a single batter. Nova was efficient as well. He left after throwing just 97 pitches and easily could have gone deeper into the game. While Nova’s performance was strong, he did give up a lot of loud outs to deeper parts of the ball park. This is admittedly knit picking, but it is worth mentioning that as strong as Nova was, his outing may have played differently in an offensive ballpark.

Speculation aside, the Yankees swept the Nationals on the road and managed to rest the bullpen a day after the team played a five hour game. The Yankees will have a good chance to extend their streak to ten on Monday. The team returns home to face the Braves. Atlanta will put on the mound while the Yankees will counter with their Ace, .

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3 Responses to Yankees get zero hits with runners in scoring position, win anyway

  1. roadrider says:

    It’s, umm, nit-picking not “knit-picking”.

    I was at the game and you’re right about Nova being helped by the dimensions of the park but also by the over-eagerness of the Nats’ hitters who gave him a lot of easy outs. It was still a strong outing and Girardi was right to pull Nova when he did as the fastball was being left up in the zone and the loud outs were coming with greater frequency.

    The situational hitting failures were really frustrating but give Jackson some credit there too. One thing that really got to me was Andruw Jones turning his back and running back to third on the Harper throw that got away from the catcher. Contrast that to Teixeira’s heads-up base running the next inning when he scored on the PB after the walk to Jones.

  2. Clint says:

    Have to win tomorrow. CC is due for a strong outing and Minor is due for a Yanks ass whooping.

  3. hawaii dave says:

    Interesting take on the wave of no hitters and plethora of 1 hitters this season. Which to me blends into the questions of hitting or lack there of,which obviously would include when there are RISP. 1)Tim Kurkjian says he believes the great pitching (or lack of hitting) is due to 2 reasons. Pitchers are throwing harder as evidenced by the amount of guys throwing 95mph and up, more than ever. Kurkjian says they are throwing harder because surgery techniques are getting better. Pitcher know the window to succeed is small and are willing to gamble and throw as hard as they can which increases success. If injury comes, the surgical techniques are better than ever. Second is that pitchers are being helped out by hitter who are swinging for homers on every pitch including w 2 strikes and ignoring the idea of going the other way or shortening swings. That is from Tim Kurkjian in an ESPN interview after Cain’s perfecto. Ask him, not me. Then today Mike Rizzo added his take on the epidemic of no-nos and he added that pitching is valued more these days and so they are drafting a higher % of pitchers and when drafting position players they are focused more on power potential hitters. Power guys swing harder, pull more, and strike out more. This leads to more homers but less contact. So if a good pitcher is hot and everyone is swinging for the fences, even with 2 strikes, the chances for no-nos increase. So this is the view of 2 baseball men, very respected in the baseball world. Personally, I have ALWAYS believed that pitchers were helped out by hitters swinging at ball 4, and being aggressive. That’s why change up pitchers dominate fast ball hitters. I always believed pitchers got WAY too much credit for a great performance. Hitters are stupid. Many would rather die than adjust. Anyway, I hope the RISP problem w my beloved Yankees improves, but it’s nice to see them win without that stat.

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