Sweep! The Yankees picked up their fourth straight win Thursday night, this one a 3-2 victory over the Rays. They came back from what many seemed to believe was an insurmountable one-run deficit based on what I saw in our comments and on Twitter. Fighting Spirit! The Yankees have won their first three home games for the first time since 2006. Also, their +12 run differential is second best in the AL as of this writing. Neato.
A-A-Bombs From A-A-Ron
Aaron Hicks has been a Yankee for one season and two weeks, and in that time, he’s shown three 80 tools on the 20-80 scouting scale. First, his throwing arm. It’s a rocket. Two, his walk-up music. Tonight he walked up to Return of the Mack all four at-bats. Last year he used Dead Prez. And three, he has a way of shutting people up. It’s a very Stephen Drew-ish quality, I’d say.
Don’t get me wrong, Hicks has been terrible for much of his time in pinstripes and he’s earned the criticism, yet every time it begins to pile up, he goes out and does some big things. On Thursday night against the Rays, those big things were a pair of home runs. One from each side of the plate. He opened the scoring with a first inning solo homer against righty Matt Andriese, and he turned a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead with a seventh inning two-run shot against left Xavier Cedeno. Both homers came in 1-1 counts and they were crushed. Gone off the bat.
One from the ?, one from the ?. It was Aaron Hicks’ day. https://t.co/pFduKkFexV pic.twitter.com/KO9d7r8AwE
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) April 14, 2017
The second home run was obviously the big one, though there isn’t really an interesting story to it. Cedeno just hung the hell out of a breaking ball and Hicks clobbered it, which is exactly what he should have done. Just a terrible pitch all around. Hicks is the first Yankees to go deep from both sides of the plate in one game since (who else?) Mark Teixeira. Teixeira last did it in July 2015. Hicks was only in the lineup because Brett Gardner is still banged up following that nasty collision yesterday, and he came through. Nice work, A-A-Ron.
Of course, the Yankees needed that seventh inning home run to take the lead because they blew some opportunities earlier in the game. In the third inning they had runners on first and second with one out, but Starlin Castro went down on strikes. In the fourth they had runners at second and third with two outs, but Ronald Torreyes lined out. There was some baserunning silliness in that fourth inning too. Chase Headley was held up at third on Austin Romine’s double even though Steven Souza’s throw was way up the line, then Headley failed to score on a wild pitch.
Watching the game live, I thought the hold at third on the double was smart. Souza got to the ball quickly and threw it in. By time it was clear the throw was well off the mark, Headley was already retreating to third base. Andriese backed up the play well too. The wild pitch though? Yeesh. Headley should have scored on that. The Yankees also wasted a leadoff double in the sixth, and a leadoff walk/wild pitch combo in the eighth. Groan. They went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position but won away, because dingers. Dingers dingers dingers.
Seven Strong From Sevy
That was, by a not small margin, Luis Severino’s best start since 2015. I thought it was a mistake to send him back out for the sixth inning to face the middle of the lineup a third time, but Severino responded with three strikeouts sandwiched around a harmless single. Shows what I know. He then went out for the seventh inning and added two more strikeouts plus a pop-up. His eleven strikeouts are a new career high.
The end result was two runs allowed on five hits and one walk in seven innings. The only real negative is that Severino got beat by the bottom of the lineup. A walk and an infield single in the second inning set up No. 9 hitter Jesus Sucre to drive in Tampa’s first run with a single. Then, in the fifth, Severino missed his spot badly with a 2-2 pitch and gave up a solo homer to No. 8 hitter Peter Bourjos. Look where Romine wanted the pitch and where it ended up:
Eh, not great Luis. Giving up two-strike dingers to dudes like Peter Bourjos is less than ideal. Severino still needs to work on limiting those mistakes because he missed his spot quite a bit in this game, especially in the early innings, but the sheer quality of his stuff allowed him to get away with it.
The Trackman system, which remains hit or miss, says Severino threw a whopping 28 changeups out of 104 total pitches in this game, and based on what I saw, that seems right. He threw it a ton. (It helped that the Rays had five lefties in their starting lineup.) Severino has a good changeup! We saw it in 2015. He lost confidence in it last year though and basically stopped throwing it. Now that he’s using it again, hitters can’t sit fastball/slider, and, well, you saw the results tonight. Very encouraging start to the year for Severino.
Leftovers
Dellin Betances made a mess of things in the eighth inning. He walked Sucre and allowed a single to Corey Dickerson to put runners on the corners with no outs, then he kicked it into overdrive. Strikeout of Kevin Kiermaier, strikeout of Evan Longoria, weak tapper up the line by Brad Miller. Inning over, runners stranded. Betances brought the pain after the first two batter reached. He was untouchable. Aroldis Chapman did was Aroldis Chapman does in the ninth.
The Yankees continue to get nice production from the bottom of the lineup. Romine had two hits, including a loud double off the right field wall that wasn’t too far from sneaking over for a cheap Yankee Stadium homer. Torreyes had a hit as well. Romine and Torreyes went 3-for-8 as the No. 8 and 9 hitters. Hicks had the two homers and both Castro and Headley had hits.
Greg Bird returned to the lineup and he still looks completely lost. He was late on several of Andriese’s 92 mph fastballs. It was not pretty. Bird went 0-for-4 with 3 strikeouts — he is 0-for-12 with eight strikeouts in his last three games — though at least the one time he did make contact, it was hard. He lined out to left field. Hopefully he snaps out of it soon. It’s only been 22 plate appearances with an injury and an illness mixed in.
Congrats to Aaron Judge. He is now the answer to a trivia question. In the ninth inning he became the first Yankee to be intentionally walked using the new automatic intentional walk rule. He stepped in the box, Rays manager Kevin Cash gave signal, and Judge went to first. It was … weird. Look away for a moment and you missed it. Judge then got picked off first with a snap throw from the catcher. Womp womp.
And finally, Castro won (lost?) the “last regular to draw a walk” race. He beat Jacoby Ellsbury by a few innings. Ellsbury drew his first walk of the season — it was only his second three-ball count of the season! — in the fifth inning. Castro drew his first walk in the eighth. (I should note Torreyes hasn’t walked yet, but he’s only a temporary regular. I still consider him a bench player.)
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Head on over to ESPN for the box score and MLB.com for the video highlights. ESPN also has the standings, but it’s a little too early to check those every night. Here’s the win probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
An interleague series! First of the year. The St. Louis Cardinals are coming to town for three games this weekend. This will be their first visit to the new Yankee Stadium and only their second visit to New York as part of interleague play. Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Wacha are the schedule starters for Friday night’s series opener. Wacha-Tanaka rolls off the tongue nicely. Anyway, RAB Tickets can get you in the door for that game, or any other game this season.
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