Tanaka Solid, But No Offense Hurts Yankees in Another Loss To Baltimore

While Yankees' ace Masahiro Tanaka is definitely a talented starting pitcher, he is by no means perfect.

The 25-year-old Japanese Rookie, 11-1 with a 1.99 ERA going into today, usually makes a couple of mistakes in each of his outings, something that hasn't really cost him yet.

Well, in this afternoon's rubber game against the Orioles it did, as Tanaka struggled to get big outs in a surprising, 8-0 loss.

For most of his performance, the possible future Cy Young did cruise, although a second inning homer from Johnathan Schoop and another pair of runs late ended up ruining his chance of winning, as the youngster surrendered 3 trips around the bases over a solid 7 frames.

During the outing, Tanaka struck out just 6, helping raise his still-good ERA to 2.11, now just the second best in the American League.

After his departure, despite his recent successes, Adam Warren allowed another 4 Baltimore runs, pretty much making the contest a blowout.

To make things even worse, Mark Teixeira left the ballgame in the bottom of the eighth after getting hit in the foot, although later on an X-Ray would come back negative, the only good thing that happened to the offense in the contest.

Yep, for the second day in a row the Yanks' bats fell silent to a less-than-amazing O's starter, collecting just 4 hits over 7 innings off Chris Tillman.

The performance of Tillman, who came into the outing with a 4.82 ERA, clinched for Baltimore another series win in the Bronx, their second already in 2014.

Interestingly, in both sets the Bombers actually took the opener, with them then being outscored 33-10 in the other four contests, a big reason why they are now just tied for second place in the AL East.