HORRI-BULL ENDING
YANKEES’ PEN IMPLODES IN TOUGH LOSS TO RAYS
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As they worked out of a ditch in the first week of the season and rose to the top of the AL East, the Yankees avoided self-inflicted wounds.
Friday night against the Rays, the Yankees grazed through a buffet line of mistakes on their way to a 5-4 loss in front of a Tropicana Field gathering of 21,146.
Begin with Luis Severino’s shaky first inning, which set the stage for a pedestrian five frames in which he gave up a run but also five hits and three walks — and eventually taxed the bullpen.
End with fill-in manager Rob Thomson not using Gary Sanchez or Aaron Hicks to pinch hit in the ninth when a home run would have tied the score.
In between, Ronald Torreyes turned an infield chopper into a two-out, tworun double by Rickie Weeks, Jr. that highlighted a three-run seventh inning when the Rays jumped ahead, 4-2.
“I should have caught it and didn’t and it was the difference in the game,’’ Torreyes said of Weeks’ ball that whispered under his glove. “It’s a play I know I can make. I have made it plenty of times.’’
Hurting more was that it appeared Chasen Shreve’s 2-2 pitch to Weeks — the one before his double — was a strike that wasn’t called by plate umpire Quinn Wolcott.
“It was a close pitch, a good pitch, yeah,’’ Shreve said.
Also sandwiched between the first and ninth frames was Adam Warren giving up three straight singles to start the seventh and Tyler Clippard uncharacteristically walking two batters in the eighth when the Rays scored the winning run on Evan Longoria’s fourth hit. That came after Matt Holliday hit a two-run homer off a 100-mph fastball from Ryne Stanek in the top of the eighth that tied the score, 4-4.
With Joe Girardi in South Florida at- tending his daughter Serena’s high school graduation, Thomson, the bench coach, took over as manager. And he put himself in the spotlight in the ninth when he didn’t use Sanchez as a pinchhitter for Austin Romine, who made the final out of the game on a grounder to pitcher Alex Colome.
“This was my decision and I told Sanchy that unless it was an emergency, I was going to try and give him a day off,’’ Thomson said of the catcher, who had started eight of the previous 10 games and got into the team hotel at 4 a.m. Friday with the other players. “In order to do that, it kind of limited my pinch-hitting opportunities. I had to pick one guy and it was going to be [Chase] Headley for Torreyes if somebody got on in the ninth.’’
Since Chris Carter preceded Romine, Thomson could have used Hicks for Carter but opted not to.
“He would have had to hit for somebody and then we would have had to hit for Toe [Torreyes] and then we would have been out of infielders,’’ said Thomson, who is 1-3 filling in for Girardi in the decision-making chair.
The Yankees’ sixth loss in nine games dropped the AL East leaders’ record to 24-15, but didn’t do much to shake the confidence in the clubhouse.
“It’s baseball. We are still playing good and still full of confidence,’’ Clippard said. “It’s one of those things.’’
Friday night, it was more than one thing. Severino’s pedestrian start, Thomson’s decision to put Sanchez on ice, Warren’s and Clippard’s shaky stints and the normally sure-handed Torreyes whiffing on a ground ball.