The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Yankees, 3-0, at Tropicana Stadium on Sunday to sweep the visitors and remain atop the American League East after the season's first weekend.
The Yankees are in the division cellar. The last time they opened a season 0-3 was 1998, the year they won 114 regular-season games and captured the World Series.
After scoring six runs in each of the first two games and still losing, the Yankees managed only three hits Sunday. They went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position and three times had runners at third base without producing a run.
Tampa Bay's starter, Jeremy Hellickson, recorded 26 of the 27 outs before he yielded to Fernando Rodney after a two-out walk to Nick Swisher. Rodney got Raul Ibanez to bounce back to the mound for the final out.
Yankees starter Phil Hughes, in his quest to return to the form that helped him win 18 games in 2010, allowed two runs and five hits in four and two-thirds innings as his pitch count soared to 99. His fastball was mostly registering 92 miles per hour on the scoreboard radar gun, except for one full-count fastball to Carlos Pena that reached 93. Pena turned that one into a third-inning home run that gave the Rays a 2-0 lead.
Hughes was able to get his breaking ball over for strikes, but he was not efficient, and his high volume of pitches knocked him out of the game in the fifth inning after he surrendered a double to Pena and a walk to Evan Longoria. Girardi brought in the left-hander Boone Logan to face Matt Joyce, and Logan struck him out to end the inning.
Logan remained in the game in the sixth and struck out the switch-hitter Ben Zobrist and also got Stephen Vogt out. Girardi had the right-hander Cory Wade warming, but hoped to get through the inning with Logan. The decision backfired as Jeff Keppinger, a right-handed hitter who has good career numbers against lefties, drilled his first home run of the season to make it 3-0.
No comments:
Post a Comment