Yankees Lose Series to Astros

 

What the Yankees hoped would be a bounce-back game against the perennial 100 loss Houston Astros turned out to be another deflating loss which featured a dead offense, with the Yankees ending up going 0-10 with runners in scoring position. The offense in this game was non-existent on the Yankees end, with them looking like zombies at the plate. The best chance at a rally the Yankees had came in the eighth inning when Carlos Beltran led off the inning with a double and Matt Albers came on to strike out the side with the middle of the lineup batting. The Yankees only scored one run on a Solarte double play that had Gardner score from third after singling to lead the inning off and he moved to third on a Brian Roberts single. Roberts was the bright spot in the lineup, collecting three hits but his effort went largely unnoticed because of the lack of bat presence in the rest of the lineup.

Hiroki Kuroda's performance of six innings on two runs will also go down the drain as the Yankees could not even have scored enough runs to make it seem like they were in the game. This offense looks anemic to start the season, and I fault that on the new construction of the lineup. There are men in the lineup who have never played with one another, so I believe that it is only a matter of time until these guys click together and begin to be a force to be reckoned with.

Dexter Fowler certainly has not needed much time to get acclimated into the Houston lineup, hitting a home run to lead off the game and smacking a triple into center field to score the Astros' second run. So in a nutshell, Dexter Fowler, who came to Houston in a trade with the Rockies, won tonight's game against the Yankees and served Hiroki Kuroda his first loss of the 2014 season. Kuroda has been a victim of bad run support ever since joining the Yankees. Last season he was worst in the AL in runs scored by his offense and had the third lowest total in the category in all of baseball.

Suddenly, Ivan Nova finds himself playing a big role in giving the Yankees some relief in tomorrow night's game. Nova has to bring home a victory for the Yankees, who would be crushed if they left Houston with an 0-3 record to begin the season after coming in thinking they could sweep this minor league level team.