YANKEE NOTES
Skipping Jose Contreras a turn in the rotation in order to clear the struggling right-hander’s head wasn’t in Joe Torre’s thought process yesterday.
“We haven’t talked about that,” Torre said. “Right now he is scheduled [for Wednesday] and we don’t have any plans to change that.”
His confidence at an all-time low, with a bad habit of tipping pitches and Red Sox tire tracks across his body, Contreras (0-2, 10.64 ERA) has everybody puzzled. How can a pitcher with a 95 mph fastball and filthy splitter allow opposing hitters to bat .354?
“We know it’s in there,” Torre said of Contreras’ stuff. “We have to get him to forget about the yesterdays.”
Getting away from the Red Sox is a start. In his brief career, Contreras is 0-3 with a 20.00 ERA in four games (three starts).
“If it turns out to be a Red Sox thing we will see what the curiosity is the next time,” Torre said.
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Much has been made of the Yankees’ poor hitting and suspect starting pitching, but their defense has been horrible. In 18 games, the Yankees have committed 17 errors (including two yesterday by Kevin Brown) and have made more than one error in four of those games. They have been error-free in just six games. They went into yesterday’s action one behind Cleveland and Detroit (16 errors) for the major-league high in miscues.
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Torre ignored Hideki Matsui‘s numbers from a year ago as a No. 2 hitter and elevated him from seventh to second yesterday.
“I am not worried about that,” Torre said of Matsui hitting .204 (10-for-49) last year in the second spot. “I am trying to generate something at the top. Moving him from seventh to second, hopefully he gets up more times.”
Matsui and Jorge Posada were the only hot hitters going into yesterday’s game. Matsui was riding a 12-for-25 (.480) streak.
“He has been so selective at the plate, he gets to 3-0 and takes strike one, strike two and hits a bullet to left-center,” Torre said. “That tells me he has a plan when he gets up there.”
The plan wasn’t great yesterday when Matsui went 0-for-4.
