That win was much easier than the last one. The Yankees jumped out to early lead against the Red Sox on Tuesday night before piling on in the middle innings and walking away with a 9-3 win in the series opener.
Early Runs
This game started almost exactly like I hoped it would: with a Jacoby Ellsbury ground-rule triple. Well, kinda. He ripped a two-strike pitch from Jon Lester to dead center field that some idiot reached over the wall and tried the grab. The guy almost fell onto the field. He was reaching out pretty far. Anyway, the ball hit the guy’s hands and Ellsbury ran all the way around the bases, but the umpires sent him back to third on the interference. They could have sent him to second but determined he would have been at third on the play. Short of a leadoff homer, I’m not sure Ellsbury could have started his first game back at Fenway Park any better.
Derek Jeter and Carlos Beltran followed the triple with well-struck singles to plate two quick runs. (Jeter moved to second on a passed ball before scoring on Beltran’s single.) It was clear early on that Lester was not as sharp as he’s been the last few weeks, struggling to locate to the corners of the plate in particular. When he missed, he missed way off the plate. Nine pitches into the game, the Yankees had three hits and two runs. Boston was playing catch-up before the anthem ended.
Tanaka You Out
I thought this was Masahiro Tanaka’s worst start so far, which tells you how good he’s been. He held the Red Sox to two run on seven hits in 7.1 innings of work — the two runs came on back-to-back homers and the first was a monster blast from David Ortiz over the bullpen in center-ish field. I remember seeing Alex Rodriguez hit a ball there once, but can’t remember any others — throwing 73 of his 105 pitches for strikes. Tanaka generated a season-low 12 swings and misses, which is still pretty good. Here is the PitchFX breakdown from Brooks Baseball. Remember, the data may change overnight.
Obviously he was effective, but I didn’t think Tanaka was as sharp in this game as he was in his last three. It seemed like his splitter was too far down for a lot of easy takes, and Brian McCann sure had to move his glove a lot. Lots of missed locations. It wasn’t a disaster outing but Tanaka wasn’t fully on either. It’s okay, it happens. That it happened and he still put together a pretty great start shows you just how special Tanaka is. Nothing seems to bother the guy — it was raining for most of the game — and he found a way to succeed even when he didn’t have it all working. It’s pretty clear Tanaka is the staff ace right now. What a stud.
All With Two Outs
For a little while it looked like the Yankees would regret failing to score after having the bases loaded with one out in both the second and third innings. (Ellsbury and Beltran grounded into double plays.) They were nursing a 4-2 lead when Mark Teixeira (walk) and McCann (single) reached base to lead off the top of the fifth. Yangervis Solarte and Ichiro Suzuki followed with strikeouts, and it looked like another rally was about to die far too young.
Instead, the Yankees put on a situational hitting clinic. And they got lucky too — Brian Roberts laced a line drive off Mike Napoli’s glove to score a run and extend the inning. It should have been the third out. A big league first baseman’s gotta make that play. Ellsbury ended Lester’s night with an eight-pitch at-bat, lining a single to left-center to score two runs. Derek Jeter capped the rally off with a single back up the middle to score the fourth and final run of the inning. Both Roberts and Ellsbury reached base in two-strike counts and, as you can tell, all four runs scored with two outs. Two-out runs are backbreakers.
Leftovers
Beltran tacked on a garbage time solo homer in the eighth to give the Yankees their ninth run. The wrap-around 8-9-1-2-3 portion of the lineup went a combined 10-for-23 with two doubles, one triple, and one homer. All five guys had exactly two hits. McCann went 3-for-4 with a walk and three singles, and all three hits were to the opposite field. He even hit some foul balls the other way. What’s that about?
Solarte went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts and is now in an 0-for-15 slump. Anecdotally, it seems like he’s seeing way more breaking balls than he did earlier in the season. Solarte did make two excellent barehand plays, one to get Jackie Bradley Jr. on a bunt and another to get Napoli on a slow tapper. Teixeira came off the bag to snap the throw and tag Bradley.
Dellin Betances was the only reliever used and he allowed his first run of the season. It was bound to happen at some point. Otherwise he retired five of seven batters faced, including two via strikeout. He now has 16 strikeouts in 9.2 innings this year. Is that good? That seems good.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
MLB.com has the box score and video highlights while some nerdier stats are at FanGraphs. ESPN has the up to the minute standings.
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
Same two teams on Wednesday night, when Michael Pineda is scheduled to start against John Lackey. The forecast isn’t looking so good right now, but that can change over the next 20 hours or so. Hopefully it does. Big Mike day is one of my favorite days of the week.
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