The Houston Astros once again beat up on the New York Yankees' pitching, defeating them 6-2 on Wednesday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.
Today wasn’t as bad for the Yankees as last night but it still wasn’t good as they fall 6-2, and finish the homestand with an even 5-5 record. Making his first start since July 26th, Michael Pineda would pick up the loss bringing his record to 9-8 on the season. Pineda went 4.1 innings giving up five earned runs on six hits.
Astros right-hander Collin McHugh improves to 14-7 on the season as he went 6.1 innings allowing two runs on five hits, while striking out eight batters and walking only two. The Yankees have scored three runs or less in six of their last seven games. In this series the Yankees were 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position.
Houston still leads the AL West by five games over the Texas Rangers, but with todays win they also improved on their record from last year. They hold a 71-57 record as of August 26th, one year after going 70-92.
Evan Gattis put the Astros on the board first in the second inning when he took Michael Pineda deep just over the wall in right field to make it 1-0.
The Astros would score again in the fifth when Jake Marisnick pulled off a safety squeeze to bring home Carlos Gomez to make it 2-0. On that play, the Yankees had a little confusion on who was supposed to cover first with Michael Pineda and Stephen Drew, leading to Marisnick being safe at first. Two batters later Jose Altuve hit a sac-fly with the bases loaded to bring in Luis Valbuena to make it a 3-0 advantage.
After that at-bat, Joe Girardi went to his bullpen and brought on left-hander Chasen Shreve. The first batter Shreve faced was Marwin Gonzalez who took the Shreve offering to center field scoring Jake Marisnick to make it 4-0. After another walk, with Colby Rasmus up, Shreve threw a splitter that went right between Brian McCann’s legs allowing Jason Castro to score to make it 5-0.
In the seventh inning after a leadoff walk to Greg Bird, Didi Gregorius hit a second deck shot to make it a 5-2 game. In the eighth inning Evan Gattis went deep for the second time in the game, hitting a shot above the Yankees bullpen to make it a 6-2 game and putting the game out of reach.
Joe Girardi after the game talked about the Yankees lackluster performances on this home stand after starting it with a sweep of the Minnesota Twins, “We’re just not hitting, I mean that’s the bottom line, we didn’t swing the bats extremely well against Cleveland or Houston, and that’s kind of been the root of our problems.”
He also talked about players getting worn down in the dog days of summer and then being able to get it going again, “For whatever reason they can get refreshed. I mean you see it, and I’ve always said hitting goes like this (motioning his hands in a up and down type movement) and right now we are down here (motioning down). We gotta come out of it and hopefully the off day helps us physically and we get some guys going.”
With the loss this afternoon the Yankees fall to 1.5 games back of the Toronto Blue Jays for first place in the AL East. If the Blue Jays win tonight it goes to two full games.
The Yankees get back in action, looking to get back in the win column, on Friday in Atlanta when they face the Atlanta Braves. Masahiro Tanaka (9-6, 3.61 ERA) goes on the hill Friday night for game one of the weekend series. The Astros also get back at it on Friday in Minnesota against the Minnesota Twins with Scott Kazmir (7-8, 2.39 ERA) looking to continue their winning ways.