Yankees Take Advantage of Dodgers D

After an off day on Monday and a rain out last night, the Yankees were about as refreshed as they will ever be heading into this afternoon's game against the Dodgers. The Yankees offense was off to a quick start when the offense put two runners on base in the second against Ryu then took advantage by having David Adams bunting the runners into scoring position to have Overbay double in both runs to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead that would change into a 6-4 final. Despite Overbay getting the big hit with runners in scoring position early in the game, the player of the game was Ichiro Suzuki by a mile. The outfielder came into today with two home runs and only 11 RBI with the season over 60 games deep. Ichiro decided that today would be his day as he went 3-4 with a home run and three RBI. Ichiro homered in the sixth to extend the Yankees lead to 3-0 and he would add to his RBI column in the seventh by poking a single with the bases loaded to plate two more runs that gave the Yankees a 6-2 lead that would turn into a 6-4 lead when things got hairy in the eighth inning for the Yankees. In the seventh inning, Mattingly went to the bullpen to bring Ronald Belisario to pitch against Vernon Wells who has been awful lately. Belisario induced a weak pop up that he should have caught but instead the ball missed his glove and trickled behind his body to get Jayson Nix score from second base and also allowed to go all the way to third when Belisario threw the ball away on an attempted out at second base. Who knows how the game would have ended without the Dodgers' four errors.

Hiroki Kuroda was cruising through six innings but in the seventh a couple of Dodgers singled and Kuroda allowed two runs to score on an AJ Ellis sac fly and a Jerry Hairston Jr. pinch hit single. Shawn Kelley came into the game and struck out the only batter he faced as Girardi went to Claiborne to begin the eighth. Claiborne was awful as he allowed a two-run home run to Hanley Ramirez who went 4-4 in the game. It would have been a three-run homer if Ichiro didn't make a sparkling play on an Adrian Gonzalez fly ball. Robertson came into the game with one out in the eighth and lose the plate when he walked two batters but was able to get the final two outs on consecutive batters to end the inning and hand the ball over to Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning who struck out two batters in another perfect inning for his twenty-fifth save of the season.

The Yankees will look to sweep the day/night double-header tonight as Phil Hughes will look to pitch a solid game against Chris Capuano and the Dodgers explosive offense. A sweep is tough to accomplish in a double-header but the Yankees were able to do it last September against the Blue Jays. They split their last double-header they played this year against the Indians in Cleveland.