Mark Teixeira brought the fire. But Brian McCann made his own. Chasen Shreve allowed two runs to score in the top of the 12th, yet the Yankees struck back again.
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Tanaka, indeed, got off to a shaky start, having allowed two runs four hitters into the game. Facing Rays reliever Steve Geltz, McCann smacked a 93-mph fastball over the right field wall to give the Yankees the victory. However, neither team is playing their best baseball leading up to this series. They only have six runs in those four games and faced starting pitchers that each had over a 3.50 earned runs average, except for Andrew Heaney, who has only started a handful of major league games in his career.
I had a pretty bad two outings.
The Rays walked six after Mark Teixeira hit a tying three-run homer in the eighth against Kevin Jepsen – without allowing a hit. Nate is 1-0 with a 3.07 ERA in 3 career starts vs the Yanks.
In fact, Tanaka’s only real trouble came on the first three batters to face him.
Masahiro Tanaka looked as if he was headed for a third straight rough outing, falling behind 2-0 in the first on Longoria’s RBI double and James Loney’s sacrifice fly.
He settled considerably after that.
He only allowed another run in the fifth. Kiermaier tripled into the rightfield corner and scored on Rivera’s sacrifice fly to right.
The right-hander rebounded with good command and location on his pitches over the next three innings, in which the Rays only managed two scratch singles. That set the table for McCann’s blast, his second walk-off hit in pinstripes.
Kevin Kiermaier, the No. 8 batter, singled over leaping shortstop Didi Gregorius, and Rivera followed with another RBI hit to put Tampa Bay up 5-3. And he has played 10 more games on the road than he has played at home.
The Rays’ bullpen has not pitched well recently. A-Rod will not be getting any milestone money from the Yankees, but a few charities will.
According to the announcement, the team will donate $3.5 million among four charities. Headley and Rodriguez had back-to-back singles in front of him. He has as many in two seasons with the Yankees as he did in nine seasons with the Braves.
In Atlanta, Juan Uribe hit a tie-breaking homer in the seventh inning, Julio Teheran delivered another strong home start and the Braves beat Philadelphia.
The agreement headed off a potential grievance between Rodriguez and the Yankees.
This was the Yankees’ offense reappearing after going AWOL for much of the past week.
CC Sabathia’s on-the-field woes have become too large to ignore.
” It just gives you hope that just one guy has to get on and you got guys that can hit the ball out of the ballpark through your lineup”, manager Joe Girardi said, “Just get Gardy on and then we’re going to take our chances”. The Yankees are 2-5 in their last 7 during game 2 of a series and 7-3 in Pinedas last 10 home starts.
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“Don’t ask me what I’m working on”, a curt Sabathia said after he was informed his next start would be Wednesday against the A’s.
