Yankees Make One Hit Stand Up In Series Win Against Tampa Bay

Yankees announcer Ken Singleton has been known to say that every major league team will win 60 games and lose 60 games over the season, and it’s what they do over that middle 60 or so games that makes the difference between playoff bound teams and those left on the outside looking in.

Sunday’s series winning game against the Tampa Bay Rays must have been one of the 60 that the Yankees were simply destined to win. It’s hard to fathom how else they won a game in which the offense was thoroughly shackled by starter Jake Odorizzi (7 IP) and the Rays bullpen (2 IP) without just a little bit of regular season baseball luck.

The Yankees managed just one hit all game. Fortunately for them it was a Starlin Castro homerun, following a walk to Brett Gardner. As the Twittererverse quickly shouted, the one hit victory was the first for the Yankees since a rain shortened 6 inning game in 1914. Incidentally, with the Yankees bullpen living up to its promise so far, these games have all felt like 6 inning affairs. Coupled with a strong performance by Nathan Eovaldi, Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman, Castro’s homerun was all they would need.

For 6.1 innings, it felt like the Yankees were on their way to back to back series losses within the division, undermining everything they did to get back into the race and making the deadline decisions Pete wrote about swing toward the “also-ran” category.

One swing of the bat changed the narrative and salvaged the Yankees season for another day. The homer wasn’t as exciting as Jacoby Ellsbury’s straight steal of home a few weeks ago but it was still thrilling (despite John Flaherty’s monotone play by play) and can hopefully spark a Yankees offense that has struggled over the past week, but should get Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran back for Monday’s game.

The Yankees may have used up their “guaranteed” 60 wins on Sunday but, for this kind of win, it was worth it.