For the 3rd time in 3 nights the Yankees ran into some good Oakland A’s pitching in the pitcher-friendly Oakland ballpark (huge foul ball area) and couldn’t muster enough offense in losing their 4th straight. This time it was 32-year old journeyman Tanner Roark who shut them down. Roark had a number of good 14- to 16-win seasons in Washington before journeying to Cincinnati and now Oakland this year. He was picked up before the trade deadline by Oakland after going 8-8 3.95 with Cincinnati this year; he is now 2-1 2.63 with Oakland.
Masahiro Tanaka, who had been brilliant in his last few starts, got into early trouble — loading the bases with nobody out in the 1st. He looked like he might get out of it without too much damage, after a ground out made it 1st and 3rd, 1 out and a run in — but a wild pitch and a single by centerfielder Mark Canha made it 3-0 Oakland. Oakland picked up 2 more runs in the 3rd to lead 5-0. And that was ballgame.
Tanaka settled down and pitched 6 innings (5 runs) and then Luis Cessa pitched 2 shutout innings to keep the Yanks in it.
Gleyber Torres provided most of the Yankee offense with solo homeruns in the 7th and 9th innings. He also scored the 1st Yankee run of the game on a Mike Tauchman single in the 5th — Torres went 4 for 4 to raise his average to .288.
Chip 👏 Away 👏 pic.twitter.com/UdZz63kjWj
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) August 22, 2019
Dead Lineup
Aaron Judge got 2 hits so there was that silver lining. And Gary Sanchez got a hit so that was good. But everyone else in the Yankee lineup was hitless — including DJ LeMahieu who is in a mini slump this week, knocking his batting average down to .331 and out of the American League lead. Gio Urshela (.336) was also hitless in this game, as was Didi Gregorius, Brett Gardner, Mike Ford, Phillip Tattaglia. Moe Greene. Stracci. Cuneo. Oakland took care of all business in the 3-game sweep. But next week is the sequel when Oakland travels to a small family place in the Bronx.
Etcetera
With the loss the 83-46 Yanks still have the best record in the American League, but by only 1 game over Houston, and an 8-game lead over Tampa for the division. They head to Los Angeles for 3 games against the team with the best record in baseball.
The Boxscore
https://www.espn.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=401076651
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