Quick But Not Painless

[Photos]

After Sunday afternoon's game, Matt chose to eat a little crow for what he wrote in the preview, and tonight it's my turn. I spent my post making fun of Brett Tomko for whining about he lack of opportunities with the Yankees this season and for tonight at least, he had the last laugh.

Tomko threw just 78 pitches in his start because he wasn't fully stretched out, but used them efficiently and pitched to contact over his 5 innings of work. He struck out one and walked one, getting the other 13 outs with the help of his defense; five on the ground and nine in the air.

The most influential play, by more than 10% in WPA, came in the third inning when Tomko faced his only real jam of the game. Ramiro Pena and Derek Jeter led of the inning with back to back singles, Johnny Damon flew out to right and Mark Teixeira loaded the bases with a walk. With only one out, A-Rod came to the plate in an extremely favorable RBI situation but instead grounded into an inning-end 1-2-3 double play. A-Rod let Tomko off the hook and the Yankees never got another man to third base.

A.J. Burnett took a complete game loss, his first CG of the year and the Yankees' second after CC Sabathia's outing in Detroit back in April. All of the damage the A's did came in the bottom of the fourth inning. Rajai Davis doubled, stole third and was singled home by Kurt Suzuki to break the scoreless tie. Jerry Hairston, Jr.'s brother Scott followed that with another single and those two were moved over by a groundout courtesy of Mike Sweeney. With two outs, Burnett started his delivery home but stopped in the middle of his delivery and held onto the ball. The runners advanced and Mark Ellis doubled into the gap to make it 3-0 A's.

Aside from the 4th inning, Burnett was one of he lone bright spots in a frustrating game for the Yanks. Over his 8 innings, he gave up six hits and two walks while striking out 5. It only took him 99 pitches and combined with the Yanks absence at the plate allowed the game to wrap up in a tidy 2:15. Jeter went 3-4 and Posada picked up a hit on his birthday.

There isn't a whole lot more to say about this one. A solid pitching performance was wasted by a non-existent offense one. The Yanks have been rolling along so well that it's easy to forget that a lot of the time, things don't go according to plan. The Yanks were supposed to beat up on Brett Tomko, but instead he made people momentarily forget that he's 36 years old and has had one year since 1997 in which he was above league average. Congrats, buddy. Go paint a fucking picture about it.