The New York Yankees look for a win versus the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday to stay in the playoff race.
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“Baseball’s a amusing game”. It has been a roller-coaster season for Archer who now sits at 8-18 on the year with a disappointing 4.05 ERA and 1.23 WHIP.
Archer has taken losses despite leading the league with 211 strikeouts.
“Ever since I started playing baseball professionally, I never evaluated myself based off win-loss”, he said.
Archer is 5-4 with a 2.52 ERA in 12 career starts against the Yankees.
He’s pitched extremely well at home and struggled on the road.
Next up for the Yankees will be yet another game against the Rays on Saturday. “But I think we have younger guys up, obviously, and sort of the new guys are providing positive energy into the clubhouse and the team”.
Gary Sanchez homered and nearly hit another while Tampa Bay was trying to intentionally walk him, leading Masahiro Tanaka and the hard-charging New York Yankees to their season-best seventh straight win, 5-1 over the Rays on Saturday. NY looks to continue its improbable march on Saturday as the American League East rivals play the third contest of their four-game series at Yankee Stadium.Gary Sanchez, who was the AL Player of the Month for August, went deep for the first time in September with a solo shot in Friday’s 7-5 triumph for New York’s franchise-record 12th homer by a rookie catcher. Gardner led off with a single and Ellsbury hit a ground-rule double to leftfield to put two runners in scoring position.
Rays left-hander Enny Romero attempted to intentionally walk Sanchez in the eight inning of Saturday’s game, with a runner on third base. Catcher Bobby Wilson moved wide as reliever Enny Romero lobbed in his first pitch at 52 miles per hour, but the ball drifted close to the plate and Sanchez socked it to the warning track for a sacrifice fly.
From the dugout, Rays manager Kevin Cash seemed to say, “What happened?” “That’s embarrassing, but we’re not going to talk about it any further than that”.
“We can taste it a little bit, ” Teixeira said.
NY was ahead 3-0 before Morrison and Souza hit consecutive home runs in the fourth, the first into the luxury suites below the third deck in right, the second off the left-field foul pole.
So in typical Gary Sanchez fashion, he swung at the lob over the plate – and hit it deep to center field.
The right-hander also has allowed two runs or fewer in 19-of-28 starts this season, tied for the most in the American League. Adam Warren hit Nick Franklin to bring the go-ahead run to the plate with one out, but Evan Longoria grounded into a 6-4-3 double play. You worry about tomorrow’s game, you get through that and you worry about the rest of your homestand.
“I think he’s OK. He had the foot pad, shin pad all over him, but the ball found a part on the leather”, Cash said.
A sore right elbow forced Miller to exit Thursday’s contest early, but he’s in the lineup just a day later.
Steven Souza/Logan Morrison – Even though the Rays were defeated by the Yankees, they did have two good performers.
Manager Joe Girardi had Mark Teixeira on his bench, but he chose to stick with the rookie Austin, because of how good his at-bats were lately, and because Erasmo Ramirez – just inserted in the game – had reverse splits aginst right-handed hitters.
Making his first major league start, Paulino (0-1) gave up four runs and four hits in three innings.
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Over in the National League, the Cardinals entered play tied with the Mets for the second wild card spot with both teams just a half of a game behind the San Francisco Giants who are clinging to the top spot.
