The Oakland A's pitching stunned the Yankees offense, which has been producing in clutch moments in essentially every game they win. Tonight they lacked that magic to come back on the Athletics, who only scored two runs themselves. CC Sabathia was not sharp tonight, pitching six innings of two run ball and struggling to throw strikes effectively. Despite only giving up the two runs, Sabathia looked weak out of the gates. Oakland was waiting out Sabathia's pitches and worked good hitters counts against the big lefty. CC was able to escape many jams tonight, which is what an ace does but even if he only gave up one run, he would have come up as the loser. The Yankees offense has a tendency of doing well against dominant pitchers but stumble when they see an average to below average starter, like today. This was a game in which the offense needed to score for Sabathia and let him bring it home but without any runs it's difficult to pitch like an ace.
The Yankees need to come out swinging tomorrow afternoon, and not scatter a hit every other inning. If the Bombers want to win this series against an A's team that came into Yankee Stadium struggling, the offense needs to wake up because the pitching has been there for majority of the time. I would take two runs allowed by Yankees pitching every day of the week because chances are that your team will win if your pitching allows no more than two runs per game, with today clearly being the outlier to the mean.
A positive that the Yankees take away from tonight is that the rest of the AL East did just as badly as the Yankees played, meaning the Yankees do not drop back in the standings. Phil Hughes will step on the mound tomorrow still looking for his first win of the season. Former Yankee Bartolo Colon will make the start for the A's.
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