The Yankees are getting a break Tuesday night when Josh Beckett won’t face them in the first of three games against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
Beckett skipped a bullpen session yesterday due to numbness and tingling in his right hand caused by inflammation in his elbow. Beckett isn’t expected to start until Friday against the White Sox.
Instead of battling Beckett’s high-octane fastball and filthy breaking stuff, the Yankees will get the fluttering knuckleballs of Tim Wakefield, who will come off the DL to pitch. Wakefield has been out since Aug. 7 with a tight right shoulder. Wakefield is 7-8 with a 3.67 ERA in 23 starts and 0-1 with a 6.35 ERA in two starts against the Yankees this season. Since the start of 2005, Wakefield is 2-9 with a 14.25 ERA vs. the Yankees.
“It doesn’t make a difference who we face,” Derek Jeter said.
“We’re talking about a guy’s pitching arm,” Terry Francona said of Beckett, who is 11-9 with a 4.34 ERA in 23 starts and 3-1 with a 3.25 ERA in four games against the Yankees this season. “Let’s make sure it’s perfect.”
Beckett felt numbness and tingling in his right hand after sleeping on his arm the night before his latest start, Aug. 17, when he gave up eight runs and eight hits in 21/3 innings in a 15-4 loss to Toronto. He hasn’t pitched since.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, two players were younger when they got their 2,500th hit than Jeter, who reached that mark Friday night at 34 years, 57 days. Hank Aaron in 1967 and Robin Yount in 1989.
Jeter is the 88th player in history to get 2,500 hits, and one of six active players to do it. He went 1-for-4 last night and is 17 hits shy of tying Babe Ruth for second on the all-time Yankee list. Lou Gehrig leads with 2,721.
Jason Giambi‘s two-run homer in the third was his 202nd as a Yankee, tying him with Bill Dickey for 13th place on the all-time club list. It was Giambi’s 25th of the season. . . . Outfielder Austin Jackson, the Yankees’ top position prospect, was placed on Trenton’s (Double-A) DL with lower back stiffness.