Game Preview: New York Yankees @ Tampa Bay Rays 5/27

The New York Yankees made the trip down to Florida overnight and will face off with the Tampa Bay Rays inside the Trop. In front of the presumable 1500 fans tonight, 900 of them being Yankees fans, the New York Yankees will send Masahiro Tanaka to the mound to face off with Chris Archer to begin the series. The Rays send three of their best pitchers to the mound this series while the Yankees counter with three of their best as well. This is going to either be extremely fun or extremely, extremely frustrating for New York and their fans. There will be no in between.

Tanaka has been everything the Yankees have advertised him to be lately which is a sight for sore eyes in New York. Tanaka has been getting stronger and sharper with almost every start this season and has seemingly gotten the train back on the rails after a pair of rocky starts earlier in the month. Tanaka faces one of the teams the Yankees are chasing in the standings tonight, no pressure.

Archer is coming into this start fresh off a disappointing start against the Detroit Tigers last time out. In the start Archer lasted just three innings and allowed six runs seeing his ERA balloon all the way up to 5.16. Archer doesn’t tend to have back-to-back bad starts and Archer doesn’t generally pitch badly against the Yankees, his 5-2 record and 2.25 career ERA are proof of that, so except a lot of frustrated Yankees fans tonight in Tampa.

The game will be played at 7:05 pm ET inside of Tropicana Field and can be seen on WPIX Channel 11 and MLB TV. This rivalry doesn’t hold the same luster it once did with James Loney and David Price on the Rays side but that doesn’t mean I’m sleeping on this team either. They still have a talented core, Evan Longoria and some dude named Archer so this will by no means be an easy series for either side. Let’s just hope this side gets the better of that side and New York brings home another series victory. Go Yankees!