Yankees take care of the awful Mariners

The New York Yankees defeated the Seattle Mariners by the score of 10-3 on Monday night. The game was delayed for just about two hours because of rain. It was also the beginning of Hope week for the Yankees. Hope Week is Helping others persevere and excel and it is the third year that the Yankees have done this. It is really touching and moving stuff. It is great what the Yankees organization does and it is so popular and gotten so much recognition that the Minnesota Twins adopted it this year for themselves. Freddy Garcia started and pitched very well and the offense rolled tonight with some help from the Seattle defense.

Garcia pitched 7 2/3 innings giving up eight hits and three runs. He walked one and struck out five. Garcia improved to 9-7 on the season with an ERA of 3.23. Boone Logan struck out both batters he faced and Steve Garrison in his major league debut retired both hitters that he faced. Rafael Soriano who has been out for the last couple of months is expected back with the club on Tuesday and will be activated most likely on Wednesday. Garrison will probably be sent back down to AA Trenton so this was a nice moment for him.

Derek Jeter had two hits, a homerun and a triple and three RBI for the third time this season. Curtis Granderson had a hit, walk and two RBI, Mark Teixeira had two hits and three RBI, it appears that he is heating up which is good for the Yankees offense especially without Arod. Nick Swisher had a hit, Andruw Jones had a hit and a walk and Eduardo Nunez had two hits and an RBI. Brett Gardner had two hits and an RBI. Nunez has hit very well on this homestand and overall as the replacement for Jeter and Rodriguez. His defense has been his problem but he has been improving on that lately. Nunez had a nice diving stop today saving a double. Granderson, Gardner and Nunez all had a double. Jeter and Teixeira had a homerun and Jeter had a triple. The Yankees were 4-11 with runners in scoring position and they left four men on base.

The Yankees took a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a Teixeira two run homerun. Ichiro Suzuki hit a sacrifice fly in the third inning making it 2-1. The Yankees got the run right back in the bottom of the third inning on a Jeter solo homerun making it 3-1 Yankees. In the fourth inning the game got sloppy as the Mariners self destructed defensively. Martin reached on an error and Jones had an infield single but it should have been an out. Nunez had an RBI single, Gardner had an RBI single and Jeter reached on a fielders choice and went to second on the error. It was 6-1 at this point and then Granderson had a sacrifice fly and Teixeira had an RBI single. The Mariners really could have been out of the inning with no runs but at the very least with maybe just a couple. It isn’t hard to see after that inning why the team has lost 16 straight games. It is hard to believe they were a 500 team before this losing streak. Granderson hit a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning making it 9-1. Justin Smoak had an RBI single in the seventh to cut the lead to 9-2 and Brendan Ryan had an RBI double making it 9-3. The Yankees added another run in the eighth inning on an RBI triple by Jeter to finish the scoring at 10-3.

The Yankees have now won two straight games and are 20 games over 500 for the first time this season. The Yankees are 2 ½ games behind the Boston Red Sox for first place in the AL east and lead the Angels in the wild card race by 6 ½ games. The Red Sox game is still going on, if they lose the Yankees will be two games behind if they win then three games behind. The Yankees and Mariners will play game two of their three game series on Tuesday night with CC Sabathia taking the mound.