A rough fifth inning doomed David Phelps and the Yankees to another loss.
The Yankees and Texas Rangers met for the first game of a three game set down in Arlington. David Phelps got the start against Rangers' ace Yu Darvish. The team didn't get bailed out by a rain-shortened affair this time around, though.
It took until the top of third for one of the teams to put a run up on the scoreboard. The run would come courtesy of the slugging Brett Gardner, who turned on a Darvish offering and sent it into the right field seats for a solo home run, his 11th of the season. Darvish settled back in and made it to the fifth without any more damage done, until that man came up again. This time, Gardner really muscled up and launched one into center field making it 2-0 Yankees. The Rangers would cut into the lead in the bottom of the inning as Elvis Andrus singled home Chris Gimenez with two outs. The lead would officially disappear a few batters later when Adrian Beltre doubled down the left field line, bringing Andrus home and knotting the game up at two. Things kept going downhill for Phelps, as the next hitter J.P. Arencibia scored both Beltre and Alex Rios with a single, vaulting the Rangers ahead. All of it while just one out away from getting out of the inning unscathed.
That was all that the Rangers would need to win the day. In spite of eleven hits the Yankees couldn't push across any non Gardner-produced runs. One of those hits just happened to be the one that pushed Derek Jeter past Carl Yastrzemski into seventh on the all-time MLB hits list as he had a nice three hit day for himself. The team had two-out rallies in both the seventh and eighth innings but failed to capitalize on them. They went 0-6 with runners in scoring position on the day. Also notable was the return of Mark Teixeira, who singled in his pinch hitting appearance during that ill-fated 8th inning rally. Welcome back, Tex!
Phelps was good for the most part, but doomed by that one bad inning. And one bad inning is sometimes all it takes if you're facing a hurler the quality of Yu Darvish. Also having an unimpressive offense that can't get hits in high leverage situations doesn't help, either. That's three losses in a row for the Yankees as they find themselves falling behind in both the division and second Wild Card races.
The squads will match up again tomorrow night at 8:05 PM. Brandon McCarthy and Nick Martinez are your probables.