Yankees Take Opener According to Plan

Yankees 7, Twins 2

By TYLER KEPNER

Published: October 7, 2009

The Yankees’ old shrine still stands on 161st Street in the Bronx, dark and cold and gutted. The October games that made it so famous have moved across the street, where the new Yankee Stadium hosted its first playoff game in style Wednesday night.

The bright lights twinkled above the signature frieze, and three decks of seats thumped on a night when nearly everything went perfectly for the Yankees. They snuffed the Minnesota Twins, 7-2, in the first game of their division series, benefiting from the kind of shutdown pitching they have lacked in October for much of this decade.

The Yankees scripted this after missing the playoffs last season. They signed C. C. Sabathia to be their ace, to overwhelm hitters when he had to. They nurtured and kept homegrown arms like Phil Hughes, Phil Coke and Joba Chamberlain. And they hoped that Mariano Rivera, as ever, would throttle their opponents.

It all happened Wednesday, when Sabathia struck out eight and allowed one earned run over six and two-thirds innings, and the bullpen blanked the Twins. Derek Jeter jolted the offense with a two-run homer in the third, and Alex Rodriguez shook his playoff slump with two run-scoring singles.

Every Yankees batter had a hit or a run except Mark Teixeira, and it added up to something the Yankees could not do against the Twins in their two prior playoff meetings. In 2003 and 2004, Minnesota won the first game at Yankee Stadium, only to lose the next three.

The Twins had won the American League Central crown in 12 innings Tuesday, beating Detroit in a playoff and arriving at their Manhattan hotel at 3:50 a.m. on Wednesday. But there were no real signs of fatigue: in fact, they scored first.

This is the third postseason in a row for Sabathia, with his third team. In 2007, he lost his last two starts for the Cleveland Indians, who fell a game short of the World Series. Last fall in Philadelphia, he was knocked out in the third inning of his only playoff start for Milwaukee.

Sabathia said those failures motivated him, and after giving up a leadoff double, he did what the Yankees pay him $23 million a year to do, generating strikeouts with runners in scoring position. He fanned Orlando Cabrera and Joe Mauer with sliders, and a flyout ended the first.

Included in that inning, though, was a danger sign. Jorge Posada is baseball’s career leader in postseason games as a catcher, but he looked crossed up with Sabathia on a passed ball. Two innings later, it happened again and cost the Yankees a run.

A single by Cabrera and a double by Mauer put two runners on for Michael Cuddyer, who singled to right for a run. Then Posada missed Sabathia’s first pitch to Jason Kubel, and glared at Sabathia as he trotted to retrieve it.

Everyone involved seemed confused: Mauer stopped in his tracks between third and home, and Sabathia stopped before covering the plate. Sensing an opening, perhaps, Mauer dashed home and slid in for a two-run lead. It was charged as another passed ball, making Posada the first catcher in 10 years with two passed balls in a first-round game.

To that point, the Twins rookie starter Brian Duensing, 25, had retired six Yankees in a row. Duensing, a teammate of Chamberlain’s at the University of Nebraska, had never been to New York. He was having a fine time until meeting a local landmark in the third.

With one out and one on, Jeter curled a hanging off-speed pitch down the left-field line for a homer. It was Jeter’s 18th in the postseason, as many as Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson, and it tied the game, 2-2.

Rodriguez, who had ended the first inning with a lazy pop-up to right, ended the third with a strikeout. That made 40 consecutive runners Rodriguez had stranded in the postseason, a streak of futility that dated to 2004.

The rest of the Yankees were hitting Duensing harder their second time through the order, and with two out and a runner on first in the fourth, Nick Swisher blistered a double down the left-field line to score Robinson Cano.

With two out in the fifth and Jeter at second after Duensing’s first walk, the Twins decided to pitch to Rodriguez with the left-handed Hideki Matsui on deck, but Duensing was not careful.

Duensing challenged him with a first-pitch fastball, and Rodriguez hammered it to left-center. He had finally broken through.

Jeter came in, Duensing went out, and reliever Francisco Liriano grooved a fastball to Matsui, who crushed it into Monument Park in straightaway center for a two-run homer and a 6-2 lead.

Up by four runs, the Yankees cruised. Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire had called his team scrappy before the game, a style that serves the Twins well every season. But more power would have been useful on Wednesday, to make up the deficit quickly, and the Twins did not have it.

Sabathia retired Mauer on a groundout with a man on second to end the fifth, and he needed just eight pitches in a 1-2-3 sixth. He issued his only walk with one out in the seventh, then deflected a bouncer off his shin that might have been an inning-ending double-play ball.

With his pitch count rising, Sabathia lasted one more batter, getting Denard Span to fly to right. Swisher, who worked on his throws this season so he would not be lifted for defense late in games, fired a strike to the plate. It kept the runner at third, and Swisher pumped his fist in delight.

Joe Girardi came to the mound to remove Sabathia after 113 pitches. Sabathia had made just the fifth quality start (minimum six innings, maximum three earned runs) for the Yankees in their last 18 postseason games, and the fans saluted him with cheers. They had longed for such playoff dominance again, and they appreciated it.

Sabathia lifted his cap on his way to the dugout, basking in the first October standing ovation in his new team’s new home. If the Yankees keep playing like this, there will be many more.

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/sports/baseball/08yankees.html?_r=1&hp