The Yankees Restore Power To The Trop And Rout The 1st Place Rays
Starting on May 3rd, the Yankees entered a tough stretch that included the 1st place Rays, the 1st place Twins, and the (then) 2nd place Mariners. In those ten games, New York went 7-3 and now trail the Rays by only one half game for first place in the AL East. Considering who has been in the lineup for these games, it is simply remarkable this team is 24-16 after 40 games. I don’t want to harp on the injuries, but there’s no baseball team in the world that would be been in this good of a spot after that many guys went down. Some teams’ seasons would already be over. These guys haven’t flinched. They’ve taken every punch thrown at them and moved forward.
Today they faced last year’s Cy Young award winner, Blake Snell. For three innings I kind of accepted they were going to get perfect game’d. That’s how good he looked after one time through the order. The beautiful thing about striking out seven times in nine hitters is that it takes a lot of pitches to do that. By the time the 5th inning rolled around, Snellzilla was tired. The YES Network guys put it perfectly, it was like a boxer coming out in the first few rounds throwing literally everything he had. Once you survive that storm you’re going to chances to beat him later on. In the 5th inning, that’s exactly what happened.
Austin Romine roped a two out double to get things going. That set up Mike Tauchman, in what could be his final game for a while in the majors, to rip an RBI double off the top of the center field wall, just missing a two run homer by inches.
The Mike Tauchman experience has been SOMETHING. He started out looking he did not have a clue how to make contact with a baseball. Then he came to life against the Red Sox and got hot for a little. Then he forgot how to do baseball again. And today he beat Blake Snell. He’s something else. With Aaron Hicks back tomorrow I imagine he gets sent down since he has options, but I could be wrong. He’s definitely played a part with the Yankees record being what it is.
A DJ LeMahieu single down the line right after, drove in Tauchman to give the Yanks a two run lead. That would be all they needed thanks to Masahiro Tanaka.
7.0 IP | 5 H | 1 ER | 7 K | 0 BB
Tanaka was incredible today, dispatching the Rays in just 73 pitches through seven innings. For the first time all year, his splitter was splitting.
He threw four pitches in his 1-2-3 7th inning. FOUR. At one point he had retired 11 men in a row. Tanaka was huge today, and gave the bullpen a big lift. He probably could have gone out for the 8th, but the Yankees wanted to avoid him seeing the top of the order for a fourth time. 73 pitches is nothing and I may have opted to go batter by batter in the 8th, but I wasn’t too mad with Britton coming in the 8th. Thankfully that did not backfire and was able to get out of a 2nd and 3rd jam with the strikeout play.
After the Trop lost power for 40 minutes, baseball resumed and the Yankees bats brought the electricity. A Thairo bomb to Cairo, a Gio Urshela two run double, and a Gardy sac fly blew the game wide open in the 9th. With the game in hand Chad Green was able to make his return in a low pressured situation. He proceeded to strike out the side and looked every bit of the old Chad Green we loved so dearly.
Now take that with a grain of salt, it was one outing in a 7-1 game, but his stuff was there. Let’s hope he can built on that and become reliable again. Adding him to Kahnle-Ottavino-Britton-Chapman would really be deadly for other teams.
The Yanks head back home for a six game stand against the O’s and Rays. I would very much welcome a three game sweep of Baltimore starting on Monday. Aaron Hicks is back in our lives THANK GOD. This lineup is clicking, pitchers are pitching, and we’re winning. I love this baseball team.
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