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.

Yankees Waste Another Strong Outing From Kuroda; Fall to Orioles 3-2

When a sport like baseball has a 162 game schedule, it's reasonable to expect a good amount of losses.

Not all of them are going to be competitive, obviously, but still, it's not unfair for fans to at least expect a consistent effort.

For example, when a club scores a few early runs to take a lead they should probably continue to try to win, a memo that apparently never reached the Yankees tonight, with them dropping a 10 inning contest to the Orioles in extremely dissapointing fashion, 3-2.

In the first few frames of this one, the Yanks were looking alright after getting a pair of solo homers from Brian Roberts and Kelly Johnson, but for some reason with two on and one out in the top of the fourth they decided to put down their bats.

In that turn, the seemingly-high-and-mighty Bombers failed to get a man home from third, pretty much ending their offensive night, as the Pinstripes would only collect one hit from then on.

Still, after that blown opportunity they did have a two-run lead, an advantage that looked comfortable considering Hiroki Kuroda was pitching a gem.

Unfortunately, that confidence would quickly prove misguided, with Kuroda hitting two and throwing two wild pitches (one came with a man on third) in Baltimore's next at-bat, allowing them to even up things up on a Chris Davis sac fly.

Now in the end, Kuroda did have a great night (tossing 7 innings of two-run ball), but due to a lack of offensive support he and his counterpart Mike Gonzalez were forced to settle for no-decisions.

Later on in the tenth, as you can see by that final score, the O's would unsurprisingly win on a Nick Hundley single, handing Adam Warren the loss and dropping the Bombers' record to 46-46, a pretty ugly .500.

Put differentially, the Pinstripes just didn't show any interest in emerging victorious this evening, a laziness that has to be fixed pretty soon, as the Yankees simply can't keep losing forever.