Nick Franklin hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the sixth inning and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the AL wild-card leading New York Yankees 6-3 on Tuesday night. Two batters later, the Yankees would take the lead off a three-run homer by Slade Heathcott and eventually win the game.
Advertisement
When Rico Noel, who ran for Carlos Beltran in the eighth, failed to come up with J.P. Arencibia’s two-out flare to rightfield in the bottom of the inning, two runs scored to make it 6-3.
“I just kind of lost control there for a couple pitches and I definitely can’t do that with the lineup they have”, said Boxberger after the 4-1 loss. “It’s something that doesn’t happen often, from the games I was coming from”. They just couldn’t quite complete it. A-Rod homered in the 1st inning (his 32nd of the season), and Greg Bird did so in the 4th (his 6th), to give the Yankees a 3-2 lead. Rodriguez is hitting.261/.306/.630 slash line with five home runs and 11 RBI in 13 games, his.937 OPS accounting for his third-highest of any month this season. Odorizzi needed Franklin’s homer to turn the deficit into a victory.
What was a mere out from continuing the inconsistency that is the Yankees of late, instead becomes the biggest win to date. “(Odorizzi) has been pretty tough on us… we just didn’t have a lot of hits”.
-RHP Jake Odorizzi had another quality start, giving up three hits and three runs in six innings to improve to 8-8 this season.
But when the key moments of the game arrived, the pitchers were not Dellin Betances or Andrew Miller or even Justin Wilson, the proverbial “guys who brought us here”.
Brian McCann’s throw short-hopped Chase Headley and skittered away, far enough to let Mahtook score on the catcher’s error, making it 2-1. “I nearly feel like he knows where the ball is going to be hit”, Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. The chances Heathcott hits that home run without the light at the end of the tunnel of an A-Rod bear hug that will move your soul are virtually nil. And RHP Brandon Gomes battled through an adventurous ninth for his first big-league save. “It’s cool”, the right-hander said.
“You get used to it, get spoiled by it”, he said.
“He’s an unbelievable center fielder”, Girardi said.
-SS Asdrubal Cabrera (left knee strain) left the September 15 game and is day to day.
MISCELLANY: Boxing legend Jake LaMotta, subject of the movie Raging Bull, was on the field pregame. LaMotta, 93, also took part in a program at the Ted Williams Museum, which is located at Tropicana Field.
Advertisement
There’s no Yankee more starved for a hit than leadoff man Jacoby Ellsbury, whose 0-for-4 night plunged him into an 0-for-25 skid. Eight of their nine starters last night were either switch hitters and right-handed hitters, who’d given Sabathia fits most of the year. The lone loss came in his last start against them on Sept 6.
