Once again, CC was great. He powered through seven innings, allowing just three hits. His only real mistake was a low fastball that caught a bit of the plate, and even then few hitters other than Evan Longoria would have deposited it in the right field seats. Another hit was a grounder that found a hole, and the final was the result of Dioner Navarro sticking out his bat head and dumping one into shallow right.
He did walk four, including Jason Bartlett twice, but none of those came back to bite him. It did hurt his K/BB ratio, though his 10 strikeouts offset some of that. Carl Crawford, Gabe Kapler, and Fernando Perez were his most frequent victims, going down twice each. Wily Aybar, Evan Longoria, and Dioner Navarro managed to avoid the 10 K machine.
Matt Garza pitched as well if not better than CC, turning this one into a bona fide pitcher’s duel. He also went seven innings, allowing five hits and one walkd but no earned runs, thanks to the first-inning error. Strangely, even though he walked just one his strikes to balls ratio wasn’t very good at all — 67 strikes to 53 balls. In any case, he got the job done.
The Yanks got two breaks which led to their first run. First, Jason Bartlett booted a Mark Teixeira grounder, which put him on first base with two outs. The other fortuity was Alex Rodriguez working the count full off Matt Garza. That allowed Teixeira to get a running start, which allowed him to score on A-Rod’s absolute rope over Crawford’s head.
Once Garza was out of the game, the Yankees struck. Nick Swisher led off the eighth by drawing a walk, and Mark Teixeira followed that with a single to right. Rob Thompson noticed Gabe Kapler bobble the ball in right, and waved Swisher on to third. That caused a poor throw, allowing Tex to mosey into second. The aggressiveness paid off, and the Yanks were set up.
Smartly, the Rays walked Alex Rodriguez, who was 3 for 3 to that point, to load the bases. They’d rather take their chances with Robinson Cano and his anemic results with runners in scoring position. Still, Cano is not hitting .000 in those situations, so he comes through some times. This was one of them. He skied a ball to center, allowing the pinch-running Jerry Hairston to score and give the Yankees the lead.
Joe Maddon used three pitchers to record the three outs in the eighth, but they allowed three runs along the way. They all go to Cormier in the box score, but Chad Bradford did give up a hit to allow an additional runner to score. It was a team effort, and it was the difference in the game.
The Yanks bullpen, on the other hand, slammed the door. Phil Hughes got off to a shaky start by walking Carl Crawford, but got a break when he decided to make a run for it on the first pitch. The Yanks pitched out, and thanks to an accurate throw and quick tag they put Crawford back into the dugout. Hughes finished off the inning, and Mo made his return with two strikeouts in the ninth.
That takes care of Game 1 for the day. With Mo and Hughes unavailable for the nightcap, the Yanks would do well to knock around Andy Sonnanstine. A.J. Burnett will try to get back on track and bring the Yanks magic number down to 16. We’ll be back in a couple of hours.
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