“That felt good tonight”. Left-handed reliever Andrew Miller blew the save yet picked up the victory on July 22 against the Giants, a 3-2 win where right-hander Masahiro Tanaka delivered to the Yankees six scoreless innings.
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His most notable play of the night came in the second inning on what some people would call an fantastic play (or just another day at the ball park for Bregman), as he gloved a grounder in foul territory in time to get Mark Teixeira out at first base. He surrendered a solo home run to Marwin Gonzalez in the first inning and a solo home run to Evan Gattis in the seventh inning.
The Yankees struck back in the top of the second.
Pineda (5-9) pitched seven strong innings to beat Yankees nemesis Dallas Keuchel (6-10), last year’s AL Cy Young Award victor. The lefty retired nine of 10 batters between the fourth and sixth, allowing only a harmless one-out single by Carlos Gomez in the fifth. Unfortunately, that was all the Astros would muster as the Yankees closed out game two, 6-3.
The Yankees then tacked on more in the fifth. Teixeira followed that with a single. The Astros intentionally walked Castro with one out to load the bases before McCann scored on a sacrifice fly by Headley.
Valencia also had the first of three RBI doubles in a three-run third that gave the A’s a 5-1 lead. Beltran had hit.305 this season with 21 home runs and 62 RBI entering Monday. He got into a couple jams, but he managed to work his way out of them.
Houston Astros’ Jose Altuve flips his bat after striking out during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the New York Yankees, Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Houston.
Sabathia shook off the first-inning homer, retiring eight of the next 10 Astros without allowing a hit. However, it was only a solo homer, and made it 6-2.
Dan Jennings (4-2) got two outs for the win. That would be the end of Sabathia’s day. Tanaka faced the Astros on Opening Day and did not factor in the decision with 5 2/3 innings of two-run ball.McCullers is coming off a dominant outing, matching his season high with 10 strikeouts (including three of Mike Trout) while giving up one run and four hits in eight innings to beat the Los Angeles Angels. Trivia: who was the last Astros player to hit a home run from both sides of the plate? Bregman will get his fair share of reps, but I expect his role to be limited to either third base or DH (or a spot start at shortstop in order to give Carlos Correa a half-day off).
Alex Rodriguez, who has been mired in a slump, was out of the lineup for a third straight game.
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One silver lining in Bregman’s offensive play from Monday night’s game was the fact that he was told to swing away in ninth inning instead of bunting even though there was a runner on first with no outs.
