Yankees 4, Rangers 15: Sabathia, Yankee offense can't dig New York out of their deep dark slump

Looking to stem the losing tide and get back to their winning ways from the first month of the season, the Yankees turned to former ace CC Sabathia today to face down the Texas Rangers lineup and their young righty Nick Martinez.  Sabathia's stats haven't been great so far this year, but he has shown some better stuff than his record and ERA might indicate.

However, today Sabathia's stuff didn't even look good by this year's meager standards. Sabathia got through two innings of work rather quickly, but just like yesterday, the third inning proved to be the Yankees undoing.  Sabathia got off to a bad start in the third, walking number nine hitter Jake Smolinski before surrendering a tough infield hit to Delino DeShields.  Shin-Soo Choo continued his hot start to the year by then singling to center, bringing in the first of many Ranger runs.  Prince Fielder followed with a single of his own, and Elvis Andrus got in the mix with a two-run single later that would knock Sabathia out of the game.  All in all, Sabathia just left too many of his weak fastballs up in the zone, and the Rangers jumped all over him.  In just 2.1 innings of work, Sabathia surrendered seven hits and six walks.

Esmil Rogers relieved Sabathia, and proceeded to be just about as bad.  He promptly gave up a ground-rule double to Rangers catcher Carlos Corporan - which scored Andrus - which Smolinski followed with a sac fly that scored Adam Rosales.  But of course, the cherry on top came when Choo got his second batch of RBI in the inning, slicing a fly ball down the left field line that just slipped into the second row for a homer, making it 10-0 Rangers after three.

It did not get any better from there; no, there would be no Yankee comeback like yesterday.  The Rangers added three more in the sixth and two more in the seventh - in the end, Rogers pitched even worse than Sabathia, walking three while giving up seven earned runs.   In the other dugout, Nick Martinez continued his excellent start to the season - he threw seven innings of two-run ball, striking out five and limiting the Yankees to just five hits.

In a bit of absurdity at the end of this game, Joe Girardi decided that rather than wasting some more bullpen arms, he might as well just throw in the towel and have Garrett Jones try to get to the last two outs of the ninth.   Jones managed not to embaress himself horribly, throwing around 75 the whole time and only hitting one batter and walking another.  The Yankees added two more runs in the ninth, but the game had long been over by then, and that was all she wrote: 15-4 Texas was the final.

Tomorrow, the Yankees will finish off this series against Texas in primetime, as Chris Capuano will take on Yovani Gallardo at 8 PM.

Box score