After beginning the west coast trip with two losses, the Yankees have righted the ship. They prevented a sweep by taking the finale in Seattle and completed a huge three game sweep of the Oakland Athletics today by the score of 4-2.
The scoring started in the first inning for New York, when Derek Jeter slapped a leadoff double to left field and Alex Rodriguez delivered a two-out RBI double to deep right that gave the Yankees a quick 1-0 lead.
What game started by A.J. Burnett wouldn't be complete without allowing a home run? David DeJesus hit a one-out double in the bottom half of the first followed by a no-doubt two-run bomb by Josh Willingham that put the A's up 2-1.
With Alex Rodriguez and Robinson Cano on base, Nick Swisher insured that bad luck wouldn't get the best of him this time around. He crushed a 2-0 offering from Gio Gonzalez into the left field seats to put the Yankees up for good. It was his fourth of the season and his second in the past four days. In fact, Swisher now has six hits and six walks during the west coast trip. Maybe this is just what he needed to get his statistics to finally show.
A.J. Burnett had another quality outing today, going seven strong innings and allowing two runs on three hits and three walks. He worked his way out of a first and second, two-out situation in the bottom of the third as well as working around a two-out triple by Coco Crisp in the bottom of the fifth. Burnett had three 1-2-3 innings today, including the sixth and the seventh innings.
Gio Gonzalez pitched a decent game, going 6.1 innings and only making one big mistake to Nick Swisher, who he was ironically involved in a trade for. Joey Devine, Brian Fuentes and Andrew Bailey combined for 2.3 innings of shutout relief pitching.
Joba Chamberlain made his first appearance since the extra inning loss in Seattle and was less than stellar. He was hit hard, but luckily snared a bullet off the bat of Conor Jackson and doubled off DeJesus at first base.
Mariano Rivera trotted out to the mound for the ninth inning and closed out the game, picking up his fourteenth save of the season and 573rd career save. It's the first save he's recorded since May 10.
The Yankees now have a ten game winning streak against the Oakland Athletics, the longest such streak in MLB at the moment.
The countdown to DJ3K is now merely 16 more hits. Robinson Cano also has a five game hitting streak now.
Play of the game: Nick Swisher's three-run dinger increased New York's chances of winning by 26.2%.
Comment of the game: Wraithpk.
Yankees have tomorrow off and open a three game series with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on Friday night.