Yankees 9, White Sox 0: Twenty hits and Tanaka lead to victory

It has seemed all season like the offense and pitching couldn't get on the same page. So many games this season resulted in the offense breaking out only to have the pitching implode, or the pitching turning in a great game while the offense flirted with being no-hit. Tonight, both aspects of the team were firing on all cylinders.

The Yankees' offense torched the White Sox for twenty hits and nine runs while Masahiro Tanaka pitched 7.2 scoreless innings to even up the series in Chicago. Hitting-wise, Brett Gardner was the star of the show with four hits. Carlos Beltran and Chase Headley pitched in plenty themselves with three hits a piece. Every batter in the lineup had at least one hit for an incredibly balanced attack.

Scoring early and often is a great way to win baseball games, and the Yankees were able to do just that. They pushed runs across in all but three innings. It was more than enough support for Tanaka, who pitched pretty much as well as he has all season.

Tanaka allowed just six hits and one walk in his 7.2-inning outing. He was relieved by Chasen Shreve, who was just called up earlier today. He pitched a clean 1.1 innings in his return to the big leagues after spending time on the disabled list and in Triple-A to work out his pitching issues.

Big hits in the game came courtesy of home runs from Headley and Austin Romine. It was Headley's seventh and Romine's third of the season. Mark Teixeira, Rob Refsnyder, and Aaron Hicks all drove in runs via the double.

For a team that has been underwhelming all season, it was nice to see everything click at once for a brief moment in time. It's almost certainly not going to be enough to drag them out of the deep hole that has already been dug for themselves, but it does make watching games a little more palatable when the result isn't a complete mess.

New York will try to escape Chicago with a series victory tomorrow in the series finale before heading off to Cleveland for the final series before the All-Star break. Michael Pineda and Miguel Gonzalez square off in the finale tomorrow night at 8:10 pm.