Thursday, June 5, 2014

Gardner's Home Run Lifts Yankees to Finale Win Over A's

In recent games, the Yankees' starting rotation has been pretty good.

With the exception of David Phelps on Monday, the Yanks' first hurlers have put together a solid 2.20 ERA over the last four contests, despite not getting a win.

That trend was finally broken today, with Masahiro Tanaka leading the team to a sweep-avoiding 2-1 victory over the A's.

Tanaka wasn't perfect by any means, as it did take him 104 pitches to get through six innings, but in the end, the performance he put up was good enough, improving his record to 9-1.

The second hitter the rookie faced on the day, Jon Jaso, did homer to right field, but after that Tanaka completely took control, not allowing another run while striking out 4 to get the W.

Backing him up on offense was the struggling Alfonso Soriano and Brett Gardner, who singled home a run and drove one into the seats respectively.

That single by Soriano snapped an 0-for-16 skid, and was just one of two hits for the veteran in the game.

After Tanaka's exit, a duo of pitchers in need of a rebound entered, with Dellin Betances tossing a perfect seventh and Adam Warren following him with a scoreless eighth.

In that frame, Warren did give up hits to the first two hitters he faced, but thanks to a nice sliding catch from Ichiro in between a couple of strikeouts of Josh Donaldson and Yoenis Cespedes the youngster was able to get the hold.

His outing wasn't great, but after a David Robertson save in the ninth it definitely was productive. 

In other news, the injured Carlos Beltran made his return to the Yankees' lineup in this one, going 0-for-3 with 2 strikeouts. He didn't necessarily contribute, but since he did swing the bat painlessly I'd say his performance was an overall good sign.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)