One guy with the initials CC in his name walked out a winner last night at Yankee Stadium. But it was not CC Sabathia.
Instead it was Coco Crisp, an ex-teammate of Sabathia with the Indians, doing the bulk of the heavy lifting.
Besides hitting a solo home run off Sabathia minutes into the game, Crisp also launched a go-ahead three-run home run off Rafael Soriano with two outs in the top of the 10th of last night’s 6-4 Yankee loss to the Athletics.
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“He’s an aggressive hitter,” manager Joe Girardi said. “He was aggressive tonight and he’s the guy that beat us.”
Soriano had turned in eight respectable outings since returning from a two-month stint on the DL with an elbow injury, but last night was not his night. He hung the same slider he’d used to strikeout Jemile Weeks for the second out to Crisp, which he deposited in the right field seats.
“I never am successful when I look for something other than a fastball,” Crisp said after his second career multi-homer game. “He threw it and I reacted. It caught the barrel.”
Soriano’s 16-pitch outing was his worst since allowing four runs against the Twins on April 5 in a game also started by Sabathia.
“Today wasn’t my day,” Soriano said through an interpreter. “I left a couple of pitches up,”
Sabathia pitched adequately, allowing three runs and hits in 7 1/3 innings. It was his best performance since nearly pitching a perfect game last month against the Mariners. His mistakes were not being sharper, especially with a hanging slider to No. 9 hitter Scott Sizemore that turned into a tying RBI single.
“I tried to throw a slider,” Sabathia said. “I just left it over the plate.”
Leaving the sliders over the plate wound up biting the Yankees. Other than three solo home runs (two by Nick Swisher in the sixth and 10th and one from Mark Teixeira in the eighth), their offense was woefully inept, especially with men on base.
Derek Jeter’s RBI single in the third represented one of two hits in 15 at-bats on a night that saw the Yankees waste men on second and third with nobody out in the fourth and seventh.
The night turned out that way because the law of averages finally broke in Trevor Cahill’s favor against the Yankees. Several Yankees had lifetime .400 averages off Cahill, who had a 13.50 ERA in four prior starts.
Last night his sinker was the best the Yankees had seen from him and certainly better than the ones they saw last month in two innings when he was torched for nine runs in triple-digit heat.
“I thought his sinker was outstanding,” Girardi said. “He threw some sinkers that it looked like the bottom dropped out and that’s as good of stuff as we’ve seen from him.”
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