The New York Yankees beat the Texas Rangers by a score of 8-6. Starting for the Yankees was Chien-Ming Wang and he got a no decision. He gave up five earned runs. David Robertson got the win. Mariano Rivera got the save. At the start of the game it looked as though we were getting the Chien-Ming Wang we’ve seen pitch so effectively during his brief relief appearances. We did but for the first two innings only. He had a great downward sinker and it had a lot of life on it. It had so much action that it looked like a left-handed slider. He was keeping the ball in the infield. He had great velocity at 94 mph and was perfect through two innings. Then the third inning started. His sinker wasn’t sinking but sailing. The Rangers were waiting for his sinker and they started to crush it. He didn’t mix up his pitches and the left-handed batters were handling his sinker away. He should of mixed in his slider to run it in on their hands so it would of opened up the outside corner for his sinker. Wang started to throw his slider more in the fourth inning but it wasn’t good enough to strike out right-handed batters and strike out left-handed batters inside. His sinker started to flatten out and it got up in the zone. If he doesn’t have an over powering sinker in games, he’s going to have to rely on his slider so he’ll have to work on it more maybe in the bull pen during games. He’s going to have to learn how to get left handed batters out with his slider in and learn how to strike out right-handed batters with the same pitch. The thing we have to worry about now with Wang is his confidence. We’ve seen him in the past get blown out of games because he didn’t have confidence in himself or his pitches. The outcome of the game was positive however. It seems that the Yankees hit better than yesterday since Tex was back in the lineup. The bull pen did a great job and kept the Yankees in the game so the Yankee batters could win it in the eighth inning. Player of the Game: Melky Cabrera. Helped the Yankees win with a two-run home run in the eighth.
