Santana Who?

Let me say that Andy Pettitte has truly stepped up in Chien-Ming Wang’s absence and has totally delivered ace-like performances for his team this month. Beating Johan Santana is fairly significant and symbolic as well, especially since the Yanks brought Pettitte back in the offseason ($16 million), which allowed Brian Cashman to cite financial reasons (to Hank) for not bringing in Santana. Without Pettitte’s strong outings (consecutive outings at that), the Yankees would not be a mere 5 games out of the AL East throne (the Rays and Sox both lost last night). He deserves a lot of credit for what he has done, especially when you consider that at the beginning of this month, Pettitte gave up 14 ER against KC and Minnesota (two back-to-back starts). Since then, he’s thrown 4 quality starts and has only given up 3 ER.

That’s simply remarkable.

Also, credit the bullpen for preserving the W in yesterday’s Met matchup. Jose Veras has slowly solidified his position as an integral part of the Yankee bullpen and seems to have locked up the 7th inning as he has pitched particularly well in high leverage situations (he has a 0.73 ERA in his last 11 appearances). With Dave Robertson’s call up (74 K’s in 51.2 IP) the Yankees are making strides in creating a formidable bullpen, even with Kyle Farnsworth’s enigmatic performances. Most of the lackluster arms have now been sent down (Ohlendorf was sent down and will work as a starter in order to refine his pitches) or have been relegated to the deepest annals of the NY bullpen (LaTroy, meet Edwar, Edwar, meet Latroy). After the first game of Friday’s doubleheader, I think that prompted the Yanks to make some decisions on these guys and now the bullpen picture, while still in transition a bit, is becoming clearer.

Finally, I have to do a quick rant before I end my post. Today, I was unable to watch the Yankee game, despite being an MLBTV owner (the internet package, where you watch games online). Granted, today’s game was on FOX, so I put on FOX hoping to see a pitcher’s duel. Instead, what I witnessed was a Chicago showdown between the White Sox and the Cubs. While that was a great game to watch, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I wasn’t able to watch the game. Why not allow west coasters to watch the game on MLBTV? It’s not like it was showing on FOX for us and I pay a monthly fee in order to watch NYY games because I’m a “displaced” fan. In anger, I called the MLBTV people and I was told by one of their workers that the reason the game was blacked out was because the teams want people to go to the stadiums to watch their games (huh?). After that strange response, I asked him why, if I pay a monthly fee to basically see Yankee games, why am I being deprived of that service today? He stumbled with his words a bit and then told me that I can always watch the game on “a pay-per-view”. This bothered me even more, because, one, it made no sense, and two, why should I have to pay more money to see a “nationally” televised ballgame when I’m already paying to see it every month?

Argh, that was frustrating. So, in the end, I thanked the worker for his time (…), then I had to stick with MLB’s Gameday feature, which is like watching a Bingo game between a group of corpses (you know you enjoy this analogy). Okay, rant over.