Yankees on Winning End of Sloppy Game

What started out as a game where Hiroki Kuroda was dominating the Blue Jays lineup ended up being an extra inning nail biter featuring a fair share of Toronto errors and Yankees leaving men on base. Kuroda pitched a fantastic game yet again, going 7.1 innings and allowing only one run to score, which was given up by Robertson in the eighth after Kuroda was pulled following a mistake at first base by Lyle Overbay on a ground ball. Kuroda lasted through 108 pitches and despite allowing a baserunner with one out in the eighth he would have breezed through the eighth without allowing anything else to the Blue Jays. Instead, Robertson allowed three runs to score, which tied the game and the Yankees ultimately ended up winning in eleven innings on a sac bunt by Ichiro which was thrown into left field by Aaron Loup, the Toronto pitcher at the time. He threw the ball to Lawrie, who was still running back to the base, in hopes of nailing the lead runner to get the first out of the inning. Instead, the Yankees played a little small ball and two runs scored because of this horrendous Blue Jays defense. Even though there were only two errors on the board, Toronto made errors all over the place. They can thank their official scorer.

The Yankees offense was largely missing today when the time came to get key hits with men on base. The Yankees had runners in scoring position in essentially every inning against Buehrle, who allowed a solo home run to Wells, but most of the time came up empty. Kevin Youkilis lined a ball over Lawrie's head in the fifth inning which was scored a two-run single. It should have been an error though, as Lawrie had plenty of time to come up with the liner. Cervelli, who got a base hit in the eleventh inning left the based loaded in the fifth inning with a double play ball and stranded Overbay on third with one out in the seventh when he grounded out to short. All is good and well though, as the Yankees come back to win after seemingly having the game wrapped up in the eighth inning. Mariano Rivera did his job and saved the game, his fifth
save of the year. Kuroda's pitching has been phenomenal lately, which is a positive that gets taken from this afternoon's game against the Jays.

The Yankees will go for the sweep tomorrow afternoon with Ivan Nova on the mound against former Marlins ace, Josh Johnson going for Toronto. The Yankees failed to sweep their last series against the Diamondbacks by losing the final game of the series. This time they will try to get the job done after winning the first two games above the border.