Baseball is a game obsessed with numbers and, as such, there is almost always a team or player closing in on setting some kind of record.
The Yankees entered Wednesday's game in just such a position. They had scored three or more runs in 41 straight games, nearing the 1994 Indians' record for 48 straight games pulling that off and already holding the Yankees franchise record in that metric.
It took them exactly three batters to extend the streak to 42 games. Derek Jeter doubled, Nick Swisher singled and Mark Teixeira homered off Jays starter Ricky Romero to secure the three runs needed to keep that record going and all but ensure the Yankees of a sweep of their series with the Blue Jays.
The Yankees would add another run in the first inning, on their way to a 6-0 win. That gives them 10 straight games with more than five runs, eight shy of the record, set by the 1950 Red Sox, on that front.
All the historic scoring gets the headlines, but Hiroki Kuroda could have gotten by with far less run support than the team provided. He went the rain-shortened distance of seven innings without allowing a run or a walk while striking out five for his ninth win of the season.
It was a nice comeback for Kuroda after two straight bad outings -- both wound up as Yankee wins but they were bad outings nonetheless -- soured some of the burgeoning belief that he had figured out life in the American League. Kuroda had everything working for him on Wednesday, though, including a Jays team that couldn't get out of New York soon enough after the onslaught that started the game.
The win means the Yankees are now 36-13 since their record fell to 21-21, a remarkable stretch that has put them so far ahead in the AL East that they'd need to expand upon the swan dive performed by last year's Red Sox to figure out a way to avoid a playoff berth. The kind of consistency that it takes to score at least three runs in 42 straight games would seem to make them a terrible bet for that kind of finish.
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In fact, it seems a lot more likely that they'd just keep scoring their three runs every night even if Mother Nature tries to get in the way.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
