Yankees Take 2 Straight in Subway Series Part 2

If the Yankees offense was a disappointment earlier this week, the Mets offense over the last two games is downright pitiful!

The Yanks blanked the Mets 5-0 on Saturday night at Citi Field, after taking the first game on Friday 9-1 in the second half of the 2009 Subway Series. AJ Burnett followed up an excellent performance from CC Sabathia with 7 great innings of his own. Burnett had a no-hitter through five innings before Alex Cora led off the sixth with a single to right center. Sabathia had a perfect game on Friday through four frames before Gary Sheffield went deep to left.

Once again, the Yankees flexed their muscles, as they scored five runs and hit two more homers in the cavernous new ballpark in Queens. Nick Swisher opened the scoring with an opposite field shot to left-center in the third, and Jorge Posada also went the other way to left-center in the sixth for a three-run blast. That brings the total to 33 runs in the last four games for the Yanks.

As for the Mets' offense, it has absolutely disappeared. They blew out the Cardinals 11-0 on Wednesday, they have totaled 4 runs over the last three games (they hung on to beat the Cardinals 3-2 on Thursday). In the two games against the Yankees, here are some of their offensive numbers:

18 innings, 4 hits, 1 run, 4 walks, 17 strikeouts. In those 18 innings, they have gone down 1-2-3 in 14 of them. That is not going to get the job done at all. Granted, their line-up has been depleted with the losses of Carlos Delgado, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran, but they are still expected to be better than this.

My three players of the game:
1) AJ Burnett - Final Line: 7.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R 3 BB, 10 K, 108 pitches, 64 strikes
Burnett was on target all night. His fastball averaged about 94 miles an hour and his curve was biting and diving from start to finish. Had he attacked a little more early in the game, his pinch count might have been lower and he could've gone deeper in the game. But only 1 hit and a season-high 10 strikeouts over 7 innings is nothing to complain about.

2) Jorge Posada - 1-4 HR, 3 RBI: Posada has been criticized of late for struggling at the plate and being unable to catch up to pitches. While this didn't change things as a whole, it showed Posada still had some pop. An opposite field shot over a high wall in an already deep part of the ballpark was impressive.

3) Nick Swisher - 1-3 HR, RBI, 2 BB: Hard to go with someone else, as Swisher worked the count to get on base and also went yard. After not playing yesterday in favor of Damon, Gardner, and Cabrera, he gets into the line-up with Damon having the flu, and makes it count. Nice performance from him.

The Yanks will try and take all three at Citi Field tomorrow when they send Chien-Ming Wang out to face Livan Hernandez. Wang is still winless with an 11.20 ERA, but has been improving slowly start-by-start. Against a weak line-up that's playing even weaker, he has a good shot for win #1. Hernandez faced the Yanks back on June 12th and was tagged for 6 runs on 7 hits, including 3 homers, in 5.1 innings. The game would later be decided when Luis Castillo dropped a game-ending pop-up and the Yanks won 9-8. More drama in the works tomorrow?