Angels in The City

By Austin Amoroso

It’s July 6 and the Yankees are still looking up at .500. A 1-7 road trip nullified the 11-1 stretch that had Yankees fans preparing for October baseball for the 13th consecutive year. At 40-42 they are 12 games back of Boston in the AL East and 8.5 back of Detroit for the Wild Card. This might be a season to forget for the Bombers, who don’t seem to deserve that nickname anymore. Not this year, anyway.

But if they are going to turn it around, it’s going to have to start now. The best pitcher in baseball [Johan Santana] was the only thing that stood in the way of a Yankee sweep of the Twins, and now that elusive .500 record is within reach once again.

The Angels arrive at The Stadium for a three-game set starting tonight and despite the Angels’ dominance of the Yankees in recent memory, this is one series, with the pitching matchups well in New York’s favor, that the Yanks have to win.

Andy Pettitte, due to bounce back after one of the worst starts of his career, takes the mound against Bartolo Colon, who is 6-4 after starting the season 5-0. He’s won just one of his last seven starts to go along with four losses in that stretch. Colon is a pitcher the Yankees have traditionally battered, highlighted by Alex Rodriguez’s three-home run, 10-RBI game last May. With Pettitte on the hill, that’s a game the Yanks should, and need, to win, at the very least to take the pressure off having to win two in a row.

On Saturday afternoon, Roger Clemens, fresh off his 350th career win, faces the Angels’ best: John Lackey. It’s hard to forecast what you’re going to get from Clemens these days. The Rocket turned back the clock in Tuesday’s 5-1 win over the Twins, shutting down the opposition to the tune of two hits and one run over eight masterful innings. But that’s really not what you expect to see every time the 44-year-old takes the mound. In 46 starts against the Angels, which dates back all the way to when they were the California Angels, Clemens is 29-9 with a 2.53 ERA.

But he hasn’t pitched against them since 2004, when he was a tender 41 with Houston, an interleague game where he was shelled for five runs on nine hits in four and two-thirds innings. With the Angels’ best on the mound, this is one game that Torre could use to give Jorge Posada, Johnny Damon and A-Rod the day off, similar to what he did on Wednesday against Johan Santana.

The finale on Sunday is another W the Yanks need to chalk up with ace Chien-Ming Wang going against Ervin Santana, Los Angeles’ talented, but erratic young righty. Santana has been crisp at home, going 4-2 with a 3.42 ERA, but on the road he is a different pitcher. He has just one win and is sporting a 7.42 ERA. Wang, on the other hand, has won his last five starts and is fresh off seven shutout innings against Minnesota on Tuesday.

The Yankees are just 12-20 against the Angels in the past four years, including a three-game sweep by the Angels in the Bronx in May, and haven’t won a season series against their nemesis since 2003, the year before Vladimir Guerrero showed up in Southern California. But if the Yankees are a good team, like they look to be on paper and claim to be in the media, then they’re going to have to beat good teams.

And they can start tonight at 7:05, against the one team they haven’t been able to figure out.