The Yankees’ high-powered offense hasn’t looked so high-powered during their first six games of the season, and yesterday, one swing from Hideki Matsui was enough to get past the Rays.
“This can’t go on forever,” Johnny Damon said of the team’s woes. “At least I don’t think so.”
One would think not. But the fact remains that the Yankees have not scored more than four runs in a game, which made Matsui’s fourth-inning two-run blast off James Shields all the more important in their 2-0 win at the Stadium, after dropping two straight to the previously awful Rays.
That it was Matsui who broke through against the Tampa Bay right-hander came as no surprise, because Matsui entered the game with four hits in seven at-bats against Shields, including two homers.
“I might have hit well against him last year,” Matsui said through his interpreter, his right knee wrapped in ice. “But I approach these at-bats like I would any at-bats.”
The results were good for Matsui, whom Joe Girardi used as a DH, but no one else.
As further evidence of the Yankees’ of fensive woes through the early part of the season, the last time they faced Shields, they won 21-4 on July 22 and knocked him out after scoring 10 runs in just 31/3 in nings. Yesterday’s loss dropped him to 0-5 against the Yanks, though he pitched far better in this outing.
“You’re not always going to swing the bats,” said Derek Jeter, who, like Damon, went 1-for-4. “It happens.”
True. Though that likely will change in The Bronx, they needed Matsui. He batted fifth in the lineup after opening the season in the seventh and eighth slots.
“Regardless where I’m hitting in the lineup, the more important thing is winning the game,” said Matsui, who also added a single in the second and another in the eighth. “My approach is really simple. It doesn’t matter where I hit.”
That approach worked well when he turned on a 2-1 changeup and hit it into the right field stands.
“Shields has as good a changeup as anyone in the league,” manager Joe Girardi said.
But Matsui said he wasn’t sitting on that pitch.
“I don’t really focus on that,” Matsui said. “I focus on the fastball and I was waiting for a fastball or anything up in the zone.”
Matsui’s teammates have to figure out a way to duplicate his success. Robinson Cano, who has struggled early in the season, showed signs of breaking out of his slump, hitting a single and a double.
“I hope you see a lot more hitting from us,” Damon said. “We’re not doing it now, but we will. In past years, we’ve gotten off to slow starts and when I got going, so did the team.”