Yanks take game one in the Bay

The Yankees earned a win against the Giants tonight in San Francisco tonight by a final score of 7 to 3.
Vizcaino earned his fourth victory of the season as he came in with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth inning after Yankees starting pitcher had walked Ray Durham to load the bases and then walked in Barry Bonds to force in a run and make the score at that time 5-2 in favor of the Yankees.
Vizcaino came in to try and get the last out of the inning before the Giants were able to bring the Giants even closer to tying the game as a hit by Bengie Molina could have cut the lead to two or even allowed San Francisco to tie the score.
Molina hit a fly ball to straight away left field off of Vizcaino but, Hideki Matsui made a spectacular catch in deep left field at the wall to collect the third out and end the inning.
It might have been the most important defensive play of the game because if that ball had gotten by Matsui it would have probably have cleared the bases and tied the score.
In relief of Kei Igawa the Yankees brought in Luis Vizcanio to pitch the last out of the 5th and the first two outs of the 6th, Mike Myers for the last out of the 6th and the first out of the 7th, Scott Proctor for the last two outs of the 7th and the first out of the 8th, and then Mariano Rivera for the rest of the 8th and the 9th to record his 9th save of the season.
The Giants scored twice in the 5th off of Igawa and added a third run in the 8th when Scott Proctor allowed the 749th home run of Barry Bond's career (a solo shot) in the bottom of the 8th.
Igawa actually looked pretty good in the first four innings of the game as he allowed only two hits and struck out five batters in those four innings.
One at bat was particularly impressive when he struck out Barry Bonds with three pitches in the bottom of the 4th inning with one on and one out.
He just looked like he got a little rattled when he got into a jam in the 5th and couldn't seem to navigate his way out of it.
But when he was lifted from the game he'd allowed two runs and then walked Durham to load the bases and walked in a run to make what was a 5-0 ballgame with nobody on base a 5-2 ballgame with the bases loaded.
Torre sort of had to make a move.
The Yankees had just lost three games in a row to Colorado and were in a position to win this game.
I think had the Yankees just swept the Rockies and had the score been different, Igawa might have been allowed to try and work his way out of it.
Hopefully he'll do as well in his next outing as he did in the first four innings of this one.
The losing pitcher for San Francisco was Matt Cain who had an uncharacteristically mediocre outing as he gave up 7 hits, 4 walks, and 5 earned runs in just 5 innings of work to bring his season record to 2-8 with a 3.46 ERA.
To put that in perspective he has only given up 5 earned runs in his past three starts for San Francisco before tonight and that took twenty and one third innings.
Key offensive players for the Yankees tonight were Alex Rodriguez (who went 4 for 4 with a walk, a double and 2 RBI's), Melky Cabrera (who went 2 for 5 with a triple and 2 RBI's), and Derek Jeter (who went 2 for 4 with a triple, a walk, one RBI and a run scored).
The only real complaint that I have is that some of the dumb base running from the Colorado series seems to have carried over as Jeter got himself picked off in the top of the 7th and it didn't look like heads up base running at all.
Then in the 8th inning Cario is on second base with a double and after watching Scott Proctor getting struck out trying to bunt he then inexplicably takes off to go from second base to home on a line out to first.
He gets caught in a sort of run down and is out easily.

These three plays that resulted in outs were really sloppy:

• Jeter getting picked off in the 7th
• Proctor tying to bunt with two strikes with a runner on 2nd base and striking out
• Cario trying to come all the way home from 2nd base on a line out to the first basemen

These three plays didn't hurt us that much in a game where we never led by less than 3 runs after the top of the second when it comes to the winner and loser of the game.
And all the Yankees players were all smiles.
And that's good.
I want them to be in a positive and confident frame of mind.
But these types of blunders are part of the reason that we lost the game yesterday to Colorado 4-3 and part of the reason we seem to be so much less successful in one run games than the Red Sox are.
I hope tomorrow is a good game for the Yankees offense and for the Yankees pitching staff and hopefully a game without some of that sloppiness.

Tomorrow's Yankees/Giants game is going to be to be an afternoon game televised on FOX.
Game time is officially at 3:55 EST and the game will feature a pitching match up of Chien Ming Wang (7-4, 3.33) against Matt Morris (7-4, 3.21).
Wang has been pitching well as of late and has been a winner of his last 4 games in a row and has been the winning pitcher in 6 of the last 7 games that he has started.
Morris has been solid this season and has earned consideration for the NL All Star Game pitching staff.
Matt Morris has gone up against the New York Yankees during interleague twice before as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals pitching staff and has a record of 0-1 a 6.75 ERA.
Well, that's all for now...
Until tomorrow afternoon ---- LETS GO YANKEES !!!

Mike