Nova helps Yanks avoid 0-3 hole

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 04 April 2014 | 18.18

HOUSTON — It was a long flight to Toronto, one that wouldn't bring the Yankees to their hotel until 5 a.m. or so. Lots of time on their hands. So in the light of how they salvaged the third game of this season-opening visit to Texas, it might have occurred to Ivan Nova, Larry Rothschild, Joe Girardi — any of them, really — to succumb to a wave of inspiration.

Such as this (with apologies to Franklin Pierce Adams):
These are the saddest of possible notes:
"Jeter to Roberts to Tex."
Three rich Pinstripers, and three milquetoast quotes
Jeter and Roberts and Tex.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble
(What in the hell is a 'gonfalon bubble?')
Making an Astro hit into a double
Reducing their rallies to nothing but rubble:
"Jeter to Roberts to Tex."

Not that the Yankees were in a mood to complain, mind you, after this 4-2 win. The problem with early-season baseball games is they tend to be compounded, like daily interest. They tend to be treated and analyzed and obsessed over like football games.

Even the most fevered and the most fervent can't fixate on 162 games. Too many games, too many days, too many chances to suffer and bleed and second-guess every pitch, every swing, every pitching change …
But after two?

After two games, you can feel as good or as bad about a baseball team as you choose. And so when the Astros took a quick 1-0 lead on Nova and the Yankees Thursday night, the third straight night they had filled the box with a number for the bottom of the first, it was understandable if your stomach started to growl.

"He didn't have his best stuff," Girardi said.

When they loaded the bases with one out, this only being Game No. 3 and all, it was fathomable that your temples would pulsate.

"I only had one pitch I felt good about all night," Nova said. "And it was my sinker."

And when Astros first baseman Marc Krauss bounced into an inning-ending double play — Krauss is clearly no poet, as he proved by going Roberts-to-Jeter-to-Tex and fouling up the lyrics — you probably breathed a pretty throaty sight of relief for the third of April, for the third game of the season.

Turns out, it was a good night for Nova's sinker to be his wingman, bailing him out in the third (Chris Carter, poet laureate, went Jeter-to-Roberts-to-Tex), and in the fourth (Alex Pressley allowed Jeter to turn in a 6-6-3 inning ender) and the fifth (Jason Castro killing the Astros' last real rally by following the script nicely: Jeter-to-Roberts-to-Tex).

Four pitches did it. Four pitches sucked the life out of four separate innings and turned what might otherwise have been a worrisome Nova outing into one that looked a lot like most of the outings he had last year: 5 ²/₃ innings, two runs, enough to keep the Yankees close until their offense finally woke from its early-season slumber and until the Astros made two plays that cost them two runs to remind you why they have lost about 8,000 games the last three years.

"The double plays kept them from blowing the game open," Girardi said, to say nothing of how much havoc they wreaked on the gonfalon double.

But hey: even that's a part of the charm of early in the season. Charles Barkley used to say it best: "This time of the year, the bad teams don't know they're bad yet."

The Astros certainly played the first two nights and two innings like they weren't even aware they had lost 111 games last year, that they had ended the season on a 15-game losing streak, that they were supposed to be a rusty old tomato can to help the Yankees softly launch their season. Played well enough, and hard enough, the Yankees tinkered with their lineup a little and uncorked a secret weapon named Yangervis Solarte on them.

And it was off to Toronto they flew, off the schneid, maybe a little poetry in their souls …

Tanaka and Nova

Then pray to Jehovah …

Or they might have just passed the time sleeping soundly. That would have been a good choice, too.


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