1. Could the first inning from one day to the next be any different. It took the supposed aces – C.C. Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang – 62 pitches to get out of the opening inning on Thursday. On Friday, Fausto Carmona and Andy Pettitte combined to need 19 ptiches. Between them, they threw just three pitches out of the strike zone.
2. That was not a real good sign, though, for the Yanks. They knew Carmona had terrific stuff. Their hope was that he could be easily flustered by this atmosphere. They wanted to drive up his pitch count and get him off his game. But throwing 94-96 bullets with precision down in the zone, Carmona answered in the first inning that he was not intimidated by this arena.
3. There was an easy to miss play in the second inning that could loom large. After Alex Rodriguez tried to jump on a first pitch again and just like yesterday when he did it popped up to the infield, Hideki Matsui had a tremendous at-bat. He was down 1-2 in the count and Carmona was just painting in the lower half of the zone at between 93-97 mph. But Matsui laid off some pitches just off the zone and drew a walk. That is a big victory for him and also for Joe Torre, who has heard an awful lot about why needs to bench Matsui.
Jorge Posada also fell behind 1-2, fouled off a pitch, took a ball. At 2-2, Carmona threw a fastball into the dirt. It skidded a few feet away from Martinez, but Matsui did not get a good read nor a significant enough secondary lead. Because of that, he did not challenge Victor Martinez and take off for second base. The double play, thus, stayed in order, and Posada hit into a double play on the next pitch. That got Carmona out of the inning, preventing the Yanks – from at the least – continuing to build early stress on Carmona’s arm.
4. What a bizarre place Cleveland is right now. Kenny Lofton, beloved no place else, gets standing ovations here, especially after his four RBI effort in Game 1. Meanwhile, a picture of LeBron James was on the scoreboard before Game 2 and it was booed because James recently wore a Yankee hat and admitted to being a fan of the team. My suspicion is that once LeBron drops 35 on opening night for the Cavaliers all will probably be forgiven.
Lofton is driving the Yanks batty in this series. Cleveland manager Eric Wedge kept him in against a lefty, Andy Pettitte, and he had a terrific seven-pitch at-bat against Pettitte in the second with two out and a runner on second. Lofton lined a single to center and Melky Cabrera threw out Jhonny Peralta at home and what was so impressive about Cabrera’s effort was that he did not rush. He trusted so much in his arm that he fielded, got his body squared and then made an impeccable peg home.
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