This game was really bad, but a position player pitched and that was at least funny.
Ivan Nova was really bad and then got hurt. Then the bullpen was really bad. Then Dean Anna pitched. Like in an official major league inning. Then the Rays won 16-1. Now I am going to try and forget that this happened.
The Rays opened the game's scoring in the bottom of the second. Wil Myers took a Nova pitch over the left field wall to give the Rays an early 1-0 lead. An inning later, the Rays added another run when Ryan Hanigan led off the inning with a home run. Ben Zobrist had singled two batters after the Hanigan home run, and two batters after Zobrist, Evan Longoria destroyed a breaking ball that Nova left hanging. After three innings, the Rays led 4-0.
An inning later, it only got worse. Nova started the inning by walking Myers. After getting the next two batters out, Hanigan came back to the plate. Hanigan would hit his second home run of the game to extend the Rays' lead to six runs.
The Yankees got one of those runs back in the top of the fifth. With one out, Alfonso Soriano reached first on an infield single. After Yangervis Solarte flied out, Kelly Johnson ripped a double into left-center field. Soriano was able to score all the way from first to make it 6-1.
Nova came back out for the bottom of the fifth, but after allowing a single to Zobrist and a double to Matt Joyce, Girardi and the trainer came out to look at him. Nova had to be taken out of the game with elbow soreness and was replaced by Matt Daley. The first hitter Daley faced was Longoria. Daley got Longoria to fly out but it was deep enough for Zobrist to tag up and score. The Yankees then decided to intentionally walk James Loney to set up the double play. Just like it always seems to, that backfired horribly. Myers hit his second home run of the day to make the score 10-1.
Daley would come back out for the sixth. After getting David DeJesus to ground out, Daley allowed a double to Zobrist. After walking Joyce, Longoria singled to score Zobrist, making it 11-1. James Loney then drove in another run when Soriano lost track of the ball at the warning track. That spelled the end for Daley, who was pulled in favor of Dellin Betances. After Myers struck out, Sean Rodriguez grounded to Solarte, who made an incredible play to stop the ball. But of course because of this game, Kelly Johnson couldn't pick the throw and another run scored. Betances then walked the next two batters because duh. The second walk scored a run. The eleven hour, twenty-two minute inning then ended when Betances struck out DeJesus. The score was now 14-1.
After Betances threw a 1-2-3 inning in the seventh (somehow), the Yankees would go down in order again in the top of the eighth. I would've talked about about what the Yankees' offense did before, but they did nothing. Other than the one run, they were totally shut down by Chris Archer again. Only this time Archer got a bazillion runs in support and had (seemingly) multiple twenty minute breaks.
In the bottom of the eighth, Dean Anna was brought in to pitch. The man who started the game at shortstop had to pitch. He velocity topped out at 72 miles per hour and he allowed two runs in his inning. He was arguably the best Yankee reliever that pitched tonight. His presence on the mound somehow made this game worth it. Nothing else happened and the Yankees lost 16-1. Here is a gif of a corgi:
via Giphy
The Yankees finish off their four game set in Tampa tomorrow at 1:40 Eastern. Vidal Nuno will start.