Pettitte Continues to Amaze

Andy Pettitte continues to amaze. After taking a year-plus off to re-connect with his family, Pettitte is back in the Yankees rotation and hasn't skipped a beat. Yes, he's had a couple of rought outings (Seattle, LAA), but he's still knows how to pitch and pitch at a high level.

 

Last night, Pettitte dominated the Tampa Bay Rays in the Yankees 7-0 white-washing of their AL East foe.  The win moved the Bombers to within 1/2 game of first place, behind both the Rays and Orioles. The three teams are even in the loss column.

 

Pettitte struck out a season high 10 hitters and has struck out 32 batters in 35.2 innings, while he has issued just seven walks. Pettitte's success has surprised his manager, but Joe Girardi has been surprised by the number of K's Pettitte has this season. Not known as a strikeout pitcher, Pettitte usually gets most of his outs via the ground. But last night Pettitte was buoyed  by a sharp 2-seam fastball that he was encouraged to throw by pitching Larry Rothschild who had monitored his bullpen warmup.

 

Five of Pettitte's strikeouts occurred when he struck out the last two hitters in the 2nd inning and then proceeded to strike out the side in the 3rd. Pettitte's 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings is higher than CC Sabathia's rate and is tied with Phil Hughes for highest among the team's starters.

 

The Yankees bats also gave the tall Texan plenty to work with. After scoring a pair of unearned runs off of Rays' starter James Shields in the 1st inning, Russell Martin broke the game open with a grand slam in the 4th inning. Martin entered the game hitting just .194, but got back above the "Mendoza Line", for the first time since May 6, with three hits. More than his own grand slam, Martin told YES' Meredith Marakovits just how impressed he was with Pettitte's steady approach and execution.

 

Pettitte has now won 206 games as a Yankee and 243 overall. The latter total tied him with Hall of Famer Juan Marichal for 53rd on the all-time career victory list.