While that ended the night on a positive note, the evening started poorly. The Yankees got a taste of what was to come from the first Tigers hitter of the game, Jeimer Candelario, who belted Happ’s 2-2 fastball into the left-field seats.
From there, the lead ping-ponged back and forth, almost exclusively on home runs. After Stanton’s homer, his 33rd of the season, gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead in the third, the Tigers retook the lead on Ronny Rodriguez’s two-run blast in the fourth. Gleyber Torres answered with his own two-run homer, No. 21, in the bottom of the inning, but Martinez hit the first of his two home runs, yet another two-run shot, in the top of the fifth to give Detroit a 5-4 lead.
The Yankees tied the game on the only non-home-run-generated run in the bottom of the fifth, when Hicks alertly scored from second on a throwing error by Candelario. When Voit clubbed one into the netting above Monument Park off Tigers reliever Victor Alcantara in the seventh, it appeared the Yankees had landed a knockout blow.
But Betances, who has been overpowering recently, got into trouble by walking Nicholas Castellanos and then leaving a fastball over the plate to Martinez, who drove it just over the right-field fence to tie the game in the eighth. Two pitches later, Betances hung a curveball to Goodrum, whose blast curled just inside the right-field foul pole.
“I missed a couple of spots,” Betances said. “I made a couple of mistakes, and they punished them. It sucks, it definitely sucks. You don’t want to give away any lead in any situation. Offensively, we put up a bunch of runs, and we don’t want to give it up.”
Happ, who had been 5-0 in his first five starts as a Yankee but was hit hard in two starts against the Tigers this season while with the Toronto Blue Jays, was pummeled for 10 hits and five runs in four and one-third innings.
Inside Pitch
The Yankees expect to have the services of Gary Sanchez, who has missed 36 games with a groin strain, for the second half of this four-game series against the Tigers. Sanchez was scheduled to catch nine innings for Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for the second straight night on Thursday, and if he came out of it O.K., Aaron Boone said, Sanchez would rejoin the Yankees on Friday and be activated to play on Saturday.
The author
No comments: