Lifeless Bats Spoil Mussina Effort

Rangers top anemic offense 4-2

Brian Cashman appeared on the various local radio shows last week insisting that the Yankees would not panic in trying to replace Hideki Matsui's offense once Godzilla went down with a badly injured wrist. It still may not be time to panic, but it is certainly time to speed up the process. The Yankees wasted another marvelous outing by Mike Mussina last night in dropping a 4-2 decision to the Texas Rangers.

I literally laughed nearly uncontrollably when Yankee announcer Jim Kaat said that the Yankees still had plenty of offense even without Matsui or Sheffield. Did Kaat happen to notice that Robinson Cano was batting 5th behind Alex Rodriguez? While Cano is proving to be quite adept with the bat, pitchers don't fear him and aren't going to throw A-Rod any good pitches. The last 3 batters in last night's lineup, Bernie Williams, Bubba Crosby, and Melky Cabrera don't have any pitchers quaking in their cleats.

Things started out all right. Kevin Millwood (4-3), who was hammered for 9 runs in 1-Plus innings his last time out was on the hill for the Rangers and had been looking anything like the ace of the staff. Robinson Cano led off the 2nd with a single and raced to third when Mark Texeira robbed Bernie Williams of a base hit at first. Cano kept looking over his shoulder, thinking the ball had gone into right field, and never stopped. Bubba Crosby followed with a 2-out RBI single for a 1-0 lead.

In the fourth, A-Rod led off with a double and came home on Cano's RBI single to center for a 2-0 lead. Cano's single was the Yankees fourth hit of the game. They would manage only 2 more hits the rest of the evening.

Mike Mussina pretty much cruised along until the fifth inning. Brad Wilkerson led off the inning with a solo home run, his fifth, and Mark DeRose and Rod Barajas followed with singles. Texas pushed across the tying run on a ground out that moved the runners up and a sacrifice fly by Michael Young.

As a steady rain started to fall, neither team could hit their opponents starting pitching. Mussina gave way to Kyle Farnsworth (1-1) to start the eighth. The heaviest rain of the night began to fall as the Rangers put together their game winning rally. Gary Matthews Jr. led off the inning with a double, advanced to the third on a wild pitch and scored the go ahead run on a single by Mark Texeira. After a walk to Phil Nevin, Hank Blalock lined a single to left bringing home Texeira ahead of Melky Cabrera's throw. Farnsworth finally struck out Kevin Mench to end the inning before the umpire crew chief Deryl Cousins finally had the grounds crew put the tarp on the field. A 22 minute delay ensued, about the only way the Yankees could chase Kevin Millwood from the game. They only managed a Derek Jeter single off of Francisco Cordero in the eighth and went down in order in the ninth to closer Akinori Otsuka, who picked up his 5th save.