No silver liner
Matt Clement walked with a noticeable limp into his postgame press conference, the result of being drilled by a Bernie Williams line drive early during Boston’s 8-6 loss to the Yankees tonight.
The pitcher was cruising before the play, five straight outs to start the ballgame. It suddenly spiraled into his worst start of the season.
Clement, who allowed a season-high eight runs, said he was hit right above his right anklebone when Williams laced an 0-1 pitch back up the middle. X-Rays showed nothing serious, but the overwhelming concern is how this might affect Clement’s mental state, particularly after last season’s episode in Tampa when he was nailed in the head by a Carl Crawford liner.
“You can’t use it for a reason why things didn’t go well, but it didn’t help the cause,” Clement said.
The eight runs are the most he has allowed since last season against the Blue Jays. He allowed four in the second, four more in the fifth.
“I’m sure it hurt,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. “How much it affected him, I don’t know. I know it got him pretty good. He certainly didn’t want to come out and we didn’t want him to come out.”
Should he have though?
“If you obviously look at the replay right now, it’s a great idea to come out,” Clement said. “It was stiff, but I was moving around between innings and I wouldn’t have gone out there and pitched if I didn’t think I could do it the right way.”
Meanwhile, Randy Johnson somehow battled back from early inning ineffectiveness to post the win with a season-high eight strikeouts. He came into the game with a 7.17 ERA for the month.
“He hung in there. He used up a lot early,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “From what he’s used to being, the fact that he hung in there I thought was progress.”
“They can beat us every time and we can still win 120 games,” he said. “It’s just a game. It’s just a game you have to play. We can lose every game to them and still be in first place. You guys [media] make it out to be like the World Series.”
Youkilis hit his fifth home run of the season off a Johnson slider in the second inning, one of three home runs on the night for Boston. The other two came courtesy of moon shots by Manny Ramirez, who hit .667 over the three-game series against New York.
‘He’s as hot as I’ve seen him,” Torre said. “It’s no fluke.”
Ramirez hit four home runs in the series over three consecutive nights.
“It’s exciting to sit back and watch him,” Youkilis said. “He’s one of the best hitters in the game.”
All of a sudden the Yankees may have found their replacement for the injured Hideki Matsui.
“We’re going to have to figure out a way to get him to feel more comfortable in left field because that’s where he will eventually wind up,” Torre said.
Cabrera has now hit safely in seven straight games for New York.
“I wouldn’t completely say they’re down. I’d say they’re doing pretty well,” Youkilis said.
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