Mussina Struggles

Score:

Blue Jays- 5
Yankees- 2

This game seemed a lot worse than it really was. Mussina struggled immediately. A big problem of his is going to be having a fastball only 84 miles per hour which he was throwing. He put the Yankees behind by one right away in the first inning. He later gave up a two run homer to Vernon Wells. However, he seemed to be hanging in their and getting the job done, if just barely, until the 6th inning. He gave up another run and Girardi yanked him before things got to bad. Latroy Hawkins came in and got the job done getting the last out of the inning. Hawkins gave up the 5th run in the following inning. Shockingly, Farnsworth actually had a good inning. I liked seeing Girardi pull Mussina early rather than leaving in the "trusted veteran" but other than that there wasn't much good on the pitching side. Notably on defense Giambi had an awful game after a good start.

The offense wasn't much better. Outside of Alex Rodriguez's home run the Yankees were shut out. A. J. Burnett was just brilliant and the Yankees couldn't touch him. Despite all this they had a chance at the end of the game. Derek Jeter started off the 9th with a groundball hit, Abreu followed that up with another one. The tying run was at the plate in A-Rod with no outs but he K'ed and the two guys following him also got out.