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Cabrera Rescues Yanks as Wang Struggles
By TYLER KEPNER
Published: June 4, 2009
The Yankees are still seeking the vintage Chien-Ming Wang, the two-time
19-game winner who has twice started a Game 1 of the playoffs. He is
slowly coming into focus, with a biting sinker here and a surprise slider
there, and his next assignment will be rigorous: the Boston Red Sox at
Fenway Park next Tuesday.
In the meantime, with the Texas Rangers at Yankee Stadium on Thursday,
Wang returned to the rotation with an uneven performance that was neither
success nor failure. Two perfect innings morphed into two messy ones,
and a two-out homer in the fifth ended his day.
Wang did not figure in the outcome of an 8-6 victory that included the
usual late-game thunder from Melky Cabrera, whose two-run homer in the
eighth broke a tie. Cabrera has three game-ending hits this season, and
while this was not quite as theatric, it capped the Yankees’ 19th
come-from-behind victory this season, the most in the majors.
“In this ballpark, we play nine innings,” said closer Mariano Rivera,
who survived two hits to work a scoreless ninth for the save. “We know
if we hold down the other team and keep it close, we have a chance to win
the game.”
After Nelson Cruz bashed a long homer off Wang’s 69th pitch — a flat
sinker — the Rangers had a 5-1 lead. The Yankees went ahead with five
runs in their half of the fifth, and after losing their lead on a homer
by Ian Kinsler in the sixth, Cabrera connected off C. J. Wilson.
Wilson had walked the leadoff man, Robinson Cano, and with one out he
tried a 1-1 changeup to Cabrera, who is improving as a right-handed
hitter. Cabrera lifted it high down the left-field line and into the
first row of seats for his sixth home run.
“I just wanted to make good contact,” Cabrera said through a
translator. “That’s all I wanted.”
Cabrera hiked his average to .429 (14 for 29) in close-and-late situations,
defined as the seventh inning or later with the team at bat tied or ahead
by a run, or with the winning run on base, at bat or on deck. For a player
demoted to the minors last August, he has been invaluable.
“I think he’s more mature,” Rivera said. “I believe also, when they
sent him down, he learned from that. He knows he has to be ready for every
situation and come to play. Spring training also was good for him, because
he had to battle for a position.”
Wang began the season with three rough starts that convinced the Yankees
he had to be hurt. After receiving a diagnosis of a weakness in his hips —
a chain reaction from the severe foot injury he sustained in June — Wang
recovered in the minor leagues.
After his promotion on May 22, he worked in relief three times, steadily
improving. Phil Hughes was shifted to relief to make room for him in the
rotation. Wang’s first two innings could not have gone better.
Kinsler, the leadoff hitter, struck out looking on a 95 mile-an-hour pitch
that veered back to nip the outside corner. Hank Blalock fanned on a slider
to finish the first, and Marlon Byrd missed a sinker to end the second.
Six up, six down.
“The first 50 pitches, the arm strength was really there — the late sink
was there, that hard sink from 92 to 93,” the pitching coach Dave Eiland
said. “After about 50 pitches, the velocity went down a little bit, and
instead of having sink, he had a little bit of tail to it, and it didn’t
have that downward action. It was on the same plane as they’re swinging the
bat.”
A two-out, two-strike wild pitch gave the Rangers their first run in the
third inning; Wang said his foot slipped on the mound. An infield hit
prolonged the inning, and a single by Blalock scored another run.
Wang’s sinker started to flatten in the fourth, when Chris Davis doubled
in two runs to make it 4-1. After two groundouts to start the fifth, Cruz’s
final blow landed deep in the Texas bullpen.
Of the 14 outs Wang collected, 5 were strikeouts and 8 came on grounders.
That is what the Yankees want and need, especially with high-profile starts
coming. After the game at Fenway, Wang lines up to face the Mets in the Bronx
on June 14.
Wang has pitched well against those rivals before, and even with his
struggles this April, he is 54-23 for his career. He said he felt comfortable
on the mound, and the Yankees were comfortable watching him, most of the time.
Eventually, five runs and seven hits in four and two-thirds innings will
not be a sign of future success. But the victory let the Yankees see the
positive in Wang’s effort.
“I saw him down in the zone, I saw more life to his sink, I saw a better
slider — he was very good at times; he was the Chien-Ming Wang of old,”
Eiland said. “The consistency wasn’t quite there yet, but we feel with
repetition and building his pitch count back up, that’s going to take care
of itself.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/sports/baseball/05yankees.html?ref=baseball
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