- Ma-Cy-hiro: At this point Masahiro Tanaka has to be on the short list of AL Cy Young candidates. Tanaka held the Rays to one stupid little run — a solo homer to the second-to-last batter he faced — in 7.1 otherwise dominant innings. He actually ran his pitch count up in the first and second innings before settling down. Tanaka retired 18 of 20 at one point, and one of the two baserunners was an infield single. One run, five hits, no walks, ten strikeouts. Domination.
- Belly to Belly: Tanaka was excellent and the Yankees need him to be, because they didn’t muster anything against Chris Archer until the sixth inning. Brett Gardner singled, then Jacoby Ellsbury launched a two-run home run to right field for the 2-0 lead. Gary Sanchez followed with a solo homer. The back-to-back blasts gave the Yankees a 3-0 lead, and with the way Tanaka was pitching, that felt mighty comfortable.
- The Late Innings: Tampa’s best chance to make this a game was in the seventh. Tanaka gave up the solo homer to Bobby Wilson, then grazed Logan Forsythe with a pitch. Adam Warren took over, hit Nick Franklin in the foot with an 0-2 pitch, then got Evan Longoria to ground into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play. That was that. Sac flies by Sanchez and Didi Gregorius stretched the lead to 5-1 in the eighth. Easy peasy.
- Leftovers: As you can see in the video above, Sanchez’s eighth inning sac fly was no ordinary sac fly. They were trying to intentionally walk him, but he shuffled over and drove the ball to the damn warning track. Unreal … Rob Refsnyder saved a run in the sixth with a running catch in right and an accurate throw home, forcing the runner to stay at third … Gardner and Ellsbury each had two hits … the bottom four hitters in the lineup went a combined 0-for-12 with four strikeouts … Richard Bleier and Tyler Clippard nailed things down in the ninth.
Here are the box score, video highlights, and updated standings. The Yankees will be one game back of the second wildcard spot regardless of who wins tonight’s Orioles-Tigers game. They have climbed to within three games of first place of the AL East though. How about that? Don’t miss our Bullpen Workload and Announcer Standings pages. Here’s the win probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
The Yankees will try for their eighth straight win in the series finale Sunday afternoon. That’s a normal 1pm ET start. The Yankees have not won eight straight games since their ten-game winning streak in June 2012. Luis Cessa and Matt Andriese will be on the mound for the finale. Fun fact: Andriese served up the back-to-back homers by Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge in their debuts last month.
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