DRAW 1ST DUD
Blunder-filled season opener is certainly not what Joe expected
the expectations can be really high. My opinion doesn’t change after one bad day.”
SAFE BUT oUT
Holliday appeared to reach safely on an infield hit in the first inning as it appeared his foot hit the base before Rays first baseman Logan Morrison caught the ball.
But Holliday was called out on the field, and that ruling was upheld following a review. “I don’t know, I thought it was pretty conclusive (I was safe),” Holliday said.
Due to a technical issue with the Yankees’ replay system, both clubs had unlimited crew chief challenges after the managers made their own initial challenge.
“We didn’t have a feed,” Joe Girardi said. “It was blurry. They basically said that there was an unlimited amount of replays we could go to.”
SHIFTING HIS APPRoAcH
Chase Headley went 3-for-4 with
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As Joe Girardi often utters as a default response, this definitely was not what you want. Not in any imaginable way, this assuredly was not what anyone associated with the Yankees wanted on Sunday.
Practically everything that could have gone wrong for Girardi and the Yanks did and then some in a tedious 7-3 loss to the Rays at Tropicana Field, beginning with a curiously botched first-inning replay review — but most prominently a horrendous Opening Day performance by starting pitcher and erstwhile spring training dominator Masahiro Tanaka.
“It’s hard to figure out,” Girardi said after the Yanks dropped their opener for the sixth consecutive season and the eighth time in nine years. “It’s one game so you don’t make too much of it...But I gotta tell you, I wasn’t really expecting that (from Tanaka).”
The good news, of course, is that the final 161 games of the 2017 campaign will be hard-pressed to match the opener — at least the first few innings, anyway — in terms of sloppiness and team-wide ineptitude (with a few exceptions). That also featured Greg Bird bobbling a ball on an infield single amid Tampa’s three-run first inning against Tanaka and a key throwing error by Gary Sanchez to plate another run for the Rays two innings later.
The two stud sluggers almost certainly will get their share of big hits all season and throughout their pinstriped careers, so let’s please two runs scored against the shift, including a bunt hit.
“I’m not saying I was trying to hit ground balls through there today, but the way they were pitching me, I changed my approach a little bit and was trying hit the ball over there and find a couple of holes,” Headley said. “The last one was just a mistake, but the time before it, I thought I took a tough pitch and hit it the other way like I wanted to.”
Headley hit .319 against the shift not start with the automatic Kevin Maas comparisons for both of them, OK?
But the budding duo also went a combined 0-for-9 on Sunday, with Sanchez grounding out with the bases loaded and the Yanks down five runs against Tampa starter Chris Archer to end the seventh and then whiffing against closer Alex Colome with two aboard in a 7-3 game in the ninth.
“He’s not gonna be perfect,” Girardi said of last summer’s 20-homer breakout star. “I’ve said the one thing that I have to monitor is the expectations for him, and I think the expectations can be really high. But my opinion doesn’t change after one day.”
Additionally, while no one would dare compare this pinstriped squad to any of its championship predecessors just yet, don’t forget that even the vaunted 1998 Yankees started 0-3 before finishing the regular season with a franchise-record 114 wins.
Still, back when Girardi was playing for the Yankees of that era, this was precisely the kind of messy game that would have prompted reporters to stake out tempestuous owner George Steinbrenner afterward for his kneejerk thoughts and the easy corresponding Boss headline. Yes, even on Opening Day.
Yes, perhaps especially on Opening Day, in fact.
The promise of a major leagueleading 24-9 record in spring as a left-handed batter, according to the research of Katie Sharp, now with SI’s MMQB.
RoSTER MoVES
The Yankees placed Tyler Austin on the 60-day disabled list with a fractured ankle to make room for Pete Kozma on the 40-man roster. Austin cannot return until June 1 as a result. They placed Didi Gregorius on the 10-day DL (retroactive to March 30) with a right shoulder strain. He’s expected back in May. training for the transitioning Bombers — and a nearly spotless Grapefruit League showing, in particular, by Tanaka — meant exactly what those numbers (good or bad) always mean once the schedule flips to games that actually count. Zilch. But that doesn’t mean Girardi and the Yankees weren’t expecting more — or certainly hoping for more — as a 2017 starting point for Tanaka, who had been charged with a single earned run over six breezy spring starts.
With nothing but question marks to follow throughout the rest of the rotation — and with Game 2 starter CC Sabathia slated here next on Tuesday — Girardi certainly wasn’t banking on just eight outs recorded by Tanaka, tying Mel Stottlemyre (1973) and Ron Guidry (1983) for the shortest stints in an opener in team annals — or a career-worst seven earned runs with two homers allowed by the ever-important $155 million righty.
“Looking back, just because it was the first game of the season, maybe I was a bit hyped up,” Tanaka allowed through his translator. “I just didn’t have good control over myself. The bottom line was I just couldn’t get the job done.” hile Girardi assessed that Tanaka’s trademark splitter “wasn’t biting,” particularly on a flat and positively flattened home run by Evan Longoria in the second inning, pitching coach Larry Rothschild believed it was more of a fastball command issue that left all of his pitches “out of whack.”
Regardless, Tanaka hardly was the lone culprit in the Yanks’ latest 0-1 start.
“Well, it wasn’t ideal,” said veteran DH and free-agent signing Matt Holliday, who finished 0-for-4 with 2 Ks. “Obviously you want to win and do well, but it’s getting back to it. We didn’t play that well and we lost, so we’ll come back on Tuesday and go get ’em.”
And it certainly was not anything close to what Girardi or anyone else would want.
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