Sensational Sabathia Silences Seattle Sluggers, Squares Series at One

Tonight, the New York Yankees evened up the series with the Seattle Mariners, receiving an absolutely phenomenal outing from their big left-hander C.C. Sabathia. Carsten Charles shut down a Mariners offense that lit the Yankees pitchers up for three homeruns a night ago, improving to 8-10 with his gutsy game-two performance. Taking the ball and the loss for Seattle was the struggling young right-hander Taijuan Walker(4-8, 4.14ERA), who was just recalled after being sent down to make adjustments in his delivery and also for what his manager Scott Servace referred to as a lack of passion for the game. Well, Walker pitched from the stretch the entire game, looked very passionate, but still got lit up by the potent Pinstriper offense, especially by one Mr. Ronald Torreyes.

The Yankees got some assistance from the Mariners defense as they broke the scoring Open in the top of the second. With two outs, Aaron Judge reached base on a fielding error by third baseman Kyle Seger and advanced to second when the next batter Aaron Hicks followed with a walk. The red-hot Ronald Torreyes, or "Toe" as Joe Girardi calls him, smoked a double over the head of leftfielder Guillermo Heredia to score Judge and give the Bombers a one run lead.

Although Sabathia pitched a perfect first two frames, the Yankees return the favor of the Mariners miscue with one of their own as Seattle tied the game in the bottom of the third. After making a tremendous catch for out number two, Aaron Judge mis-played a rocket off the bat of Leonys Martin, allowing the centerfielder to make it to third with a two-out triple. Shortstop Ketel Marte then plated Martin with a ground ball single up the middle to knot the game up at one.

Ronald Torreyes continued to make his case for more playing time as he recorded his second hit in as many at-bats, lacing a leadoff double in the top of the fifth. And then Toe came around to score when the next batter Jacoby Ellsbury launched his sixth homerun of the season, a bomb to right that put New York back on top by a 3-1 score.

Mark Teixeira made an appearance tonight and helped his good friend C.C. out with a leadoff double in the top of the sixth. After Brian McCann grounded out, advancing Teixeira to third, Judge hit a sac-fly to center that extended the Yankees lead to three. Two batters later, Walker would be pulled when he couldn't get Torreyes out as the utility man smacked a sharp single off the glove of third-baseman Kyle Seager.

C.C. Sabathia was utterly brilliant tonight, tossing seven innings of one run ball while allowing just three hits. only one walk and seven punchouts. Tommy Layne worked a scoreless eighth, and despite Didi Gregorius's ninth inning RBI ground-rule double that made it a 5-1 non-save situation, Delin Betances came on and shut the door in the ninth to preserve the series-tying win.

These two teams will be back at it in about 13 hours from now for the rubber game of the three-game set, with first pitch scheduled for 3:40 PM/EST.