Melky’s three-run homer helps sink the Yankees 8-2 in Chicago

So that was pretty uneventful. After busting the White Sox pitching staff Friday night, the offense couldn’t repeat it against Johnny Danks and the Chicago bullpen. Bryan Mitchell, tonight’s spot starter, was tagged for four earned runs and Diego Moreno came back to Earth by allowing another four runs in relief. Meh. Not really a banner night for the Bombers. It was largely a very forgettable match. It’s also a Saturday night so let’s go with bullet points.

• Spotty start: Bryan Mitchell’s second career ML start was a mixed bag. His stuff looked pretty good – fastball went up to the 96-97 range, the cutter was cutting and the curveball made the Sox hitters foolish at times. However, when he mislocated, he gave up some loud contact. All in all, Mitchell gave up seven hits – three of them extra base hits – and four earned runs in four innings pitched. He did strike out five, thanks to his explosive stuff, but when you give up a big homer to Alexei Ramirez (whose OPS climbed to .603 after tonight’s match) on a fastball up, then there’s some work to be done.
• 0-for-13: That, my friends, is what the top five hitters in the lineup did tonight. You can’t really have lack of production from the big guys and expect to get a win. To be fair, each one of them (except for Brett Gardner) earned a walk, but then again, they also combined for eight strikeouts. Which means that they struck out more than half of the time. No bueno. The bottom of the lineup pretty much accounted for most of the offense and they would’ve scored more if Didi Gregorius’s long fly ball didn’t get caught by Avisail Garcia right over the fence. That would have made it a 3-2 game instead of 2-1 and who knows how the match would have changed had Garcia not caught it? Oh well.
• 12-out bullpen: Diego Moreno isn’t really the seventh or eighth-inning guy that they need to monitor innings and he did a chunk of the dirty work tonight. After tossing 5.1 no-hit innings earlier this week, Moreno was much more brittle tonight – allowing four earned runs in three innings while striking out none. The decisive blow for New York came in the fifth when Moreno allowed a three-run HR to our old friend Melky Cabrera – the dinger put the game out of reach at 6-1 and Yanks did not come any close to tying it up. Nick Rumbelow came in the ninth and tossed a scoreless frame.
• Leftovers: Yankees scored their first run on that woulda-been-homer sac fly by Didi Gregorius in the third. Because Johnny Danks doesn’t have the best control (allowed four walks and three hits), the offense had several chances to drive in more earlier but came up empty-handed (1-for-6 with RISP). New York got another run with one out in the ninth with Brian McCann’s homer and that was pretty much it. 8-2 is the final score.

Here’s tonight’s box score, updated standings, video highlights and WPA. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday night. Tomorrow, it’s a day game matchup between Ivan Nova and Jeff Samardzija (got the spelling right on first try!)