Greene Comes Up Huge For Yankees in Shutout of Orioles

Over the last few weeks, all any of us have heard from the media is that the Yankees are done without four of their five starting pitchers. 

Those four arms, Michael Pineda, CC Sabathia, Masahiro Tanaka, and Ivan Nova, are a lot better than the Yanks' current group of Chase Whitley, Shane Greene, David Phelps, and Brandon McCarthy, although lately that hasn't been too clear, with the latter quad each tossing quality outings over the last few months.

Despite that, it's unlikely that this trend will last forever, a message that again failed to reach the Bombers' backups today, with the aforementioned Greene shutting out the Orioles for 7 1/3 innings as the Pinstripes won a game they really had to 3-0.

In his fun-to-watch, 22-out performance, Greene rarely got into trouble, retiring the first 10 men he faced and not allowing a hit until the bottom of the fifth. 

In that frame and the next, the O's did manage to get runners to third, an effort that would prove worthless due a pair of threat-ending strikeouts of Nick Hundley and Nelson Cruz.

That latter K of Cruz, one of nine Greene had on the day, came on a nice slider in the dirt, pretty much ending the Orioles' day of competitiveness, eventually causing the always-tough Chris Tillman (6.2 IP, 3 ER) to take his fifth loss of the season.

Over on the offensive side of things, as expected, the Yankees again didn't play that well, only collecting three runs thanks to a duo of RBI Doubles from Mark Teixeira and Jacoby Ellsbury along with an RBI Single from Derek Jeter.

Still, what they did do was good enough to get the W, something they obviously really needed, as another defeat this afternoon would've dropped them below the .500 mark.