Yankees 0, Tigers 2: Baseball is dumb

In the nine innings of this game, the Yankees managed to waste a good outing from Masahiro Tanaka, and go scoreless against Jordan Zimmermann and the Tigers’ bullpen. That would be bad enough if the game had lasted a normal amount of time.

It did not last a normal amount of time. After a delay to start the game, all the badness was split up by a 3+ hour rain delay. Before the break, the Yankees’ offense kept stranding runners, and things didn’t change after it. The Yankees dropped the game and the series 2-0 to the Tigers.

Early on, it looked like it might be Tanaka who would have the bad day. To start the game, the Tigers got three straight hits, plating a run. After two singles, a Justin Upton double got Detroit on the board. Tanaka would go on to retire the next three hitters, getting out of the inning and stranding runners at second and third.

The Yankees missed an opportunity to get on the board in the third inning, and Detroit took advantage and added to their lead in the fourth. With two outs in the inning, Tanaka issued a walk to Mikie Mahtook. James McCann then singled to center. Jacoby Ellsbury completely flubbed fielding the ball two separate times, allowing Mahtook to come all the way around to score.

Tanaka ended up going six innings, allowing two runs (one earned) on six hits and a walk, striking out seven. Tommy Kahnle came in and threw a scoreless inning in the top of the seventh.

After some more Yankees RISP failure, a fun thing happened where it started raining. As the game was headed to the top of the eighth, the tarp was brought on and the game went into a delay. Earlier, a non-rain rain delay forced the game to start about an hour and a half later than it was scheduled to. Unrelated, but two-ish innings can unusually be played in an hour and a half or less. The delay lasted three hours, and the game eventually resumed at 8 pm eastern, almost seven hours after it was supposed to start.

Following the delay, Dellin Betances came in and threw an immaculate inning in the top of the eighth. He added another scoreless frame in the ninth. In the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees wasted another chance, before going down in order in the ninth. The dumb game was finally over.

In potentially happier news, Sonny Gray makes his first start as a Yankee tomorrow. That will be hopefully be fun.