Sabathia Gets His 200th Wins, Yanks Win 3rd Straight

CC Sabathia was all but assured that he would be getting his 200th career win against the Orioles last Friday in Baltimore. He took a no-hitter into the 6th inning, but unraveled to give up three runs to try the game in the 6th, then gave up a go-ahead home run in the 7th.

In his follow-up outing against the Twins at Target Field, though he didn't quite have no-hit stuff, but he was still good enough to battle for seven strong to earn to 200th victory of his long, tenured career.

"I feel like all of them, I've had to battle for," Sabathia said. "Early I felt like all of them were like this; kind of all over the place, a couple of walks, runners on base, just battling to get outs. I think that's just me."

Things weren't entirely going CC's way early on, giving up a few hits through the first couple of innings, but luckily he was able to escape each inning with anyone scoring, until the third inning when Minnesota put a couple runners on base to start things, then Joe Mauer sent a double to left field that scored the first run of the game.

Trevor Plouffe added another run for the Twins in the 5th inning on a solo homerun to center field off of Sabathia. Gardner ran back and just seemed to run out of room as he leaped towards the wall. It was the 18th homer that CC has allowed this season, 2nd in the Majors.

As the 6th inning rolled around, I pointed out on Twitter that the Yankees needed to score some runs to give CC something to work with, and scoring runs is exactly what they did.

Brett Gardner walked to open the inning, then Ichiro doubled off of the wall in right field. The Twins manager Jon Gardenhire decided to pitch to Robbie Cano with first base open and, well, it didn't play out well as continued his hot hitting with a two-run double to right field, tying the game at 2-2.

"The only way that you can look at it, it's a team that is not in the race," Cano said. "Maybe when you're in the race, it's different. The last thing you want is the same guy to beat you twice, the third hitter to beat you. Maybe I would say that's the difference. They're taking their chances."

"He's a great hitter. You're trying to figure out different ways," Gardenhire said. "The bottom line is, you want him to chase. If you get pitches up in the zone, he kills it, and he did it again tonight."

Travis Hafner followed with a single to left that moved Cano to third. A couple batters later, Lyle Overbay lined a sac-fly to center field that was deep enough for Cano to score from third to give the Yankees a 3-2 lead. A lead they wouldn't give up.

Sabathia rebounded from the Plouffe homerun to hold the Twins scoreless over the next two innings to finish with a season-high 121 pitches, holding the Twins to two runs on seven hits, while walking three and striking out nine.

"When he doesn't have his best stuff, he's going to find a way to get it done, and that's what he did tonight," catcher Chris Stewart said. "He got into quite a few jams out there, but he made big pitches when he needed to and got out of them."

David Robertson worked a scoreless 8th inning, lowering his ERA to 2.48, then Mariano Rivera picked up his 3rd save in as many days, number 28 for the season, and CC had picked up his 200th win.

Today, the Yankees will try to sweep the Twins in this four-game set on Independence Day, with a afternoon start time of 2:10 pm EST, with David Phelps taking the mound to face Kyle Gibson and the rest of the Minnesota Twins.

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