Monday, April 28, 2014

Game of the Day (4/27/14)

Yankees 3, Angels 2. Garrett Richards taking on Masahiro Tanaka. Care to guess which half of the pitching matchup was more heavily hyped going into the game?

In the early going, Richards pitched as though he should have been the highly-publicized starter; he was perfect through two innings before finally allowing a Kelly Johnson single in the third. Tanaka, meanwhile, allowed a Mike Trout single and walked Howie Kendrick in the first, then walked Chris Iannetta in the second, but stranded all three runners. Colin Cowgill led off the top of the third with an automatic double, but a walk to Albert Pujols set up a double play ball from Kendrick that kept the game scoreless.

The Angels broke through against Tanaka in the fourth. Erick Aybar led off the inning with a double, and with one out, Tanaka plunked Ian Stewart and walked Iannetta to load the bases. JB Shuck hit into an RBI forceout to open the scoring, and Cowgill whiffed to leave runners at the corners. The starters worked around a Carlos Beltran walk and a Kendrick triple in the bottom of the fourth and top of the fifth, respectively, and the Yankees came back to tie it in the bottom of the fifth when Mark Teixeira walked, Brian Roberts doubled him to third, and Ichiro grounded out to score him.

The tie was short-lived in the extreme, as David Freese led off the top of the sixth with a homer. Tanaka retired the next three Angels, while Richards worked around his own error to preserve the lead in the bottom of the inning. Tanaka was pulled with one out in the seventh; Adam Warren took the mound and allowed a single to Trout, then got a double play from Pujols. Teixeira stepped to the plate to start the bottom of the seventh, and homered on a 2-2 pitch to retie the game.

Richards worked through the remainder of the seventh without incident, and Warren set the Angels down in order in the eighth. Michael Kohn relieved Richards in the bottom of the inning, walked Jacoby Ellsbury to start off, struck out Derek Jeter, and walked Beltran. Kohn was pulled at that point, and his replacement somehow managed to show even less control: while pitching to Brian McCann, Nick Maronde unleashed a pair of pitches that escaped from Iannetta (the first a passed ball, the second a wild pitch) that allowed Ellsbury to scamper around to score the go-ahead run. Maronde's sixth pitch hit McCann, and he was yanked for Kevin Jepsen, who induced an inning-ending double play. David Robertson walked Iannetta but allowed nothing else in the ninth, securing the save.

There was a sort of pleasing symmetry to this game. Both teams scored twice against the opposing starter, with the first run coming at the end of an extended rally involving a double and scoring on a groundout, and the second coming on a solo homer by a player who's seen better days. The mirroring was reduced by the entrance of the bullpens, but neither relief corps allowed a hit of any consequence (there was one single, which was followed by a double play). The difference was that the Angel relievers were the ones to suffer a collaborative control collapse, gifting the eventual winning run to the Yankees without requiring a hit. Which actually draws a slight parallel to the game of 4/27/84, as both of them were decided by pitchers throwing without knowing where the ball was going.

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