Game 77 Wrap-Up: NYY 4 CHW 0

With CC on the DL, Hiroki Kuroda becomes the Yankee rotation's unofficial ace.  And after Friday night's pitching debacle, he took on the ace's responsibility of needing to provide innings and pitch well to avoid a losing streak.  It wasn't going to be an easy task, especially with Jake Peavy as his pitching counterpart, but Kuroda lived up to the responsibility and then some yesterday, blanking the White Sox through 7 of the strongest innings he's pitched this year.

Game Notes:

- Kuroda's worst inning was actually the top of the 1st, where he gave up 2 singles and a walk but managed to work out of trouble with a couple of strikeouts.  Those Ks would be a sign of what was to come.

- The offense quickly got on the board in the bottom half of the inning on Curtis Granderson's 23rd HR of the season.  Dewayne Wise doubled home Nick Swisher in the bottom of the 2nd to make it 2-0.

- Kuroda was brilliant after the close call in the 1st.  He retired all 12 batters he faced in the 2nd-5th innings in order, 6 of them via strikeout and all of the strikeouts swinging.  Kuroda really had his slider and splitter working, and the White Sox were practically powerless against them.

- As well as Kuroda was pitching, 2-0 was hardly an insurmountable lead, and Peavy wasn't pitching horribly either.  But he made a couple of mistakes in the 5th to Wise and in the 6th to Robinson Cano and they each hit solo shots to extend the lead to 4-0.

- Kuroda finished his afternoon in style, striking out his 10th and 11th batters of the game to end the 7th, and it was all bullpen from there.  After being spared from Friday night's carnage, D-Rob, Boone Logan, and Rafael Soriano combined for 2 painless, scoreless innings to complete the shutout.

- Major props to Wise in this series, who came up just a triple short of the cycle yesterday after throwing 0.2 perfect innings the night before.

F*ck Yeahs:

- Kuroda: 7 IP, 3 H 0 R, 1 BB, 11 K.  Simply brilliant.  Easily his best game as a Yankee in probably the most important game he's pitched this season to date.  Tied his career high with the 11 Ks and 10 of them were swinging.

- Wise: 3-3, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 R, 2 RBI.  Can we get this guy some consistent playing time right now?  Good things happen every time he's on the field.

- Cano & C-Grand: Combined 4-8, 1 2B, 2 HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, 2 LOB.  They're hitting too many HR this year (obviously), but they had good all-around days at the plate too, so I can let it slide this time.

Oh Nos:

- Alex Rodriguez & Mark Teixeira: Combined 0-8, 5 K, 3 LOB.  Didn't do a damn thing to help against Peavy, but at least they didn't hit any pesky HR.

/eye roll

Next Up:

The final game of this series is today, and a split is in the cards, so that's a small victory given how the first 2 games played out earlier in the week.  Phil Hughes, another of the remaining healthy trio who needs to shoulder more of the load right now, takes the ball for the first time after his 8 shutout innings against Cleveland on Tuesday.