Yankees Find Winning Formula and Shut Down the Angels in Game 1

Alex Rodriguez ran over Los Angeles Angels catcher Jeff Mathis while trying to score in the 5th inning. He was tagged out.

By TYLER KEPNER
Published: October 16, 2009

The American League Championship Series arrived at Yankee Stadium on Friday with the icy blast of mid-winter and the blazing heat of C. C. Sabathia. The go-go Los Angeles Angels might as well have worn snowshoes. They hardly used their spikes.

There were no base-running high jinks by the Angels, no first-to-third dashes, no daring leads, no stolen bases. Sabathia kept them stuck in their tracks for eight innings of a 4-1 Yankees victory, allowing four hits and striking out seven with a walk. He has done precisely what the Yankees wanted when they made him the centerpiece to their off-season, winning the opening game of the division series and now of the A.L.C.S.

The Yankees looked more like the Angels than the Angels did. They challenged outfielders on the bases, played flawless defense and collected timely hits. There were no home runs on a wind-whipped night, just resourceful hitting and the knack for capitalizing on mistakes by the Angels.

The Angels earned a chance at the World Series partly because they made just 85 errors in the regular season, a franchise low. But they made three in Game 1, leading to two unearned runs off starter John Lackey.

Sabathia matched his reputation in the first inning, and the Angels upended theirs. Sabathia makes a living pounding the strike zone, and that is what he did. But the Angels, who have a reputation for not making mistakes, cost themselves on defense.

Most pitchers try to attack the zone, but few have the stuff to do it as confidently as Sabathia. He came out pitching fearlessly to the Angels, with 12 strikes out of 15 pitches in the first. Each of the first three hitters faced an 0-2 count, and Bobby Abreu struck out looking on a slider.

The Angels helped the Yankees in the bottom of the inning. Derek Jeter won an eight-pitch duel with Lackey, smacking a leadoff single to right, and then Lackey sawed Johnny Damon’s bat. But Damon got enough of the ball to flick it down the left field line, taking second when Juan Rivera’s throw sailed to the middle of the infield for an error.

With runners at second and third, Alex Rodriguez drove in Jeter with a one-out sacrifice fly to center. Lackey would have been out of the inning a batter later, but Hideki Matsui’s pop up landed just past the infield dirt, between shortstop Erick Aybar and third baseman Chone Figgins.

It seemed as if nobody called for it, and in any case, Aybar wore a ski mask that covered his ears. He and Figgins looked at each other a moment before the ball thudded to earth, and it must have been a miserable helpless feeling: there was nothing to do but pick it up as Damon scored the second run.

Lackey seethed as he watched the play, letting loose what seemed to be a roar of frustration. It was hard to blame him: a 2-0 hole was a lot on a frigid night with Sabathia on his game.

He struck out Kendry Morales on a changeup in the second inning, and got Figgins and Abreu looking on 94 mile-an-hour four-seamers in the third. In just three innings, against a contact-hitting team, Sabathia had registered strikeouts with his changeup, slider and fastball.

The weather helped Sabathia in the fourth, but only momentarily. With one out, Vladimir Guerrero reached down and punished a slider to left center. Off the bat, it had the trajectory and the sound of a home run, but the flags above left field told a different story. They blew straight in, and the wind knocked the ball to the warning track.

Guerrero pulled his creaky body into second with a double, and he scored with two outs on a single by Morales. It was the last base runner Sabathia allowed until the seventh, when he had a 4-1 lead.

Damon, who was 1 for 12 in the division series, led off the Yankees’ fifth with a double to left center. After Rodriguez walked with one out, Matsui drove a double — a legitimate hit, this time — to left. Damon scored easily and Rodriguez motored around third.

With his surgically repaired hip, Rodriguez has been less likely to take extra bases this season. But he has been off for four days, and must have felt spry enough to challenge the arms of Rivera and Aybar. He ended in a heap at the plate with catcher Jeff Mathis, who lost his helmet and mask in the collision, but not the ball.

Even in making an out, though, Rodriguez had taken the Angels’ game to them, with daring and aggressive base running. There was more of the same in the sixth, when it seemed as if the Angels, not the Yankees, were the ones on the bases.

With two out and nobody on, Lackey walked Melky Cabrera for the second time. Cabrera had drawn two walks in just one of his last 65 games, and despite playing center field, he is not much of a stolen-base threat.

Yet he concerned Lackey enough to prompt a pickoff throw, which spun away from Morales at first for an error. Cabrera took second, and scored the Yankees’ second unearned run when Jeter blistered a single up the middle. For good measure, the hit bounced off Torii Hunter’s glove for another error.

Lackey was finished after 114 pitches and five and two-thirds innings. Sabathia, meanwhile, had just 80 pitches through six. Strong defense kept his pitch count low.

In the sixth, Damon slid to rob Abreu of a hit and Sabathia nimbly grabbed Hunter’s bunt and threw him out him at first. Hunter and Manager Mike Scioscia argued, to no avail, that Mark Teixeira’s foot had come off the bag.

In the seventh, after a walk to Morales, Cano dove to his left to corral a grounder by Howie Kendrick. Sabathia followed by striking out the pinch-hitter Mike Napoli on a changeup, and he exulted on the mound, pumping his fist and shouting.

It was the kind of reaction a pitcher might have at the end of a postseason series, just before his joyous teammates swarm him in a dog pile. This series is just beginning, but unless the Angels find themselves, it will not last very long.

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/sports/baseball/17yankees.html?_r=1&ref=sports