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Yankees Have Rays' Number
Tribune photo by JASON BEHNKEN
B.J. Upton jumps into the wall after making a over the shoulder catch on a ball hit by Yankees Alex Rodriguez during the 2nd inning Tuesday night at Tropicana Field.
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Published: September 3, 2008
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ST. PETERSBURG - Tuesday night, the too-old, too-slow, left-for-dead Yankees did just as Hank Steinbrenner pleaded of them earlier this season.
The team that remains a distant third in the AL East standings played like the front-running Rays for an evening and beat Tampa Bay 7-2. With lockdown starting pitching backed by aggressive base-running and a couple of massive home runs, the Yankees continued to hold sway over the Rays as they have much of the season.
New York, one of only two AL teams with a winning record against the Rays this season (Cleveland is the other), topped Tampa Bay for the eighth time in 13 meetings. An easy Boston victory against Baltimore brought the Red Sox within four games of the division lead on a night the Rays wanted to flush as quickly as possible.
"I know they've hit some tough moments this year," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "But believe me, they are the Yankees and they are very talented and they beat us again."
The early innings didn't bode well for the Rays, as Eric Hinske ran head-down into third base in the second inning while Willy Aybar was standing on the bag. Despite that glitch, which resulted in Aybar being tagged out, the Rays still had a man on third with less than two outs but couldn't manage to push a run across against Mike Mussina.
They also left a runner idling 90 feet from home to end the third, fourth and seventh innings in a throwback to their run-producing difficulties of midseason and stranded 10 men overall.
Mussina tied a season-high with eight strikeouts, half of them called, and the Rays were none too pleased with home-plate umpire Brian Runge's work.
"Mussina is really good at picking corners and a liberal strike zone tonight really helped him a lot," Maddon said. "Really wide, and it was kind of amorphic, and that benefited him a bit."
Matt Garza wasn't a fan, either, doing his best to hold back direct criticism of the umpiring but letting his frustration bleed through after a tough outing.
"I threw a lot of good pitches and for some reason they either knew that the inside pitch wasn't getting called ... and it kind of started to be upsetting," he said. "I felt I made a lot of good pitches tonight and things didn't go my way."
The Yankees got a handle on Garza once everyone in the batting order had seen him. Unbothered through the first three innings (thanks in part to a second-inning over-the-shoulder catch at the wall by B.J. Upton on an Alex Rodriguez drive), Garza suddenly got lit up in the fourth.
An infield single by Derek Jeter got them started, and the Yankees' captain stole second as Shawn Riggans bounced a throw that got there in plenty of time but handcuffed Jason Bartlett. A Jason Giambi sacrifice fly eventually scored Jeter to tie the game, and trade-deadline acquisition Xavier Nady put the Rays in uh-oh territory with a monster two-run drive to left that may have dented the C-ring catwalk.
The Yankees tacked on a couple more runs the following inning with help from a throwing error by Garza that was quickly parlayed into a run when Johnny Damon tripled. The leadoff man then came in to score on a soft chopper off Jeter's bat that went right to a drawn-in Bartlett but was sufficiently poky that the shortstop believed he didn't have a play at home.
Garza departed after giving up a single to Rodriguez to open the sixth. Rodriguez would score later in the inning, then pile on by leading off the eighth with a hefty home run of his own off Jason Hammel. The 424-foot blast to left-center was the 548th of Rodriguez's career, tying him with Mike Schmidt for 12th on the all-time list.
Before that drive, the Rays had something of an opening in the seventh as they drove Mussina from the game with back-to-back doubles by Gabe Gross and Riggans. Akinori Iwamura then singled off reliever Damaso Marte, but Riggans was held at third base and Upton and Carlos Pena struck out.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi turned to the just-activated Joba Chamberlain, back in a relief role, to put down the first-and-third uprising. Rocco Baldelli obliged, coming off the bench to ground the 96 mph first pitch to short.
It just wasn't the Rays' night, as Maddon summed up: "We did not execute like we normally do tonight and they did execute well."
Reporter Marc Lancaster can be reached at (813) 259-7227 or mlancaster@tampatrib.com.
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