GAME 68: (Dateline Oakland, CA) — In the final contest of their 10-game road trip, the Yankees were knocked on their keister early, and never got off the mat. The on-again, off-again saga of Vidal Nuno starts landed squarely in the ‘off-again’ column today. Nuno usually has one bad inning (as all pitchers tend to do), but recovers and keeps the team in the game. Trouble was, today he had two. And was pulled after 3 innings, allowing 8 earned runs.
Before a Father’s Day sellout crowd was fully settled in (this is California after all), the Yanks were down 6-0 at the end of two. A’s backstop Derek Norris hammered a 3-run homer in the bottom of the first, and center-fielder Coco Crisp did the same in the bottom of the second. By the end of the fourth, they were down 10-0, and it was, in NBA parlance, ‘garbage time’ after that.
Included in the Yankees’ 5 unanswered runs were homers by Carlos Beltran and Brett Gardner — but both were against relief pitching after A’s starter Jesse Chavez departed in the 7th with the ‘W’ all but assured.
Summing up the disappointing end to a once promising road trip that resulted in a 5-4 ledger, manager Joe Girardi said:
“I think if you were to say before you start a road trip that you’re going to go to the West Coast and you’re going to end up with a positive road trip, you’d say, ‘All right’. But when we were 5-2 and had a chance to have a really good road trip, it kind of stings a little bit.”
Here’s the box score and mlb.com’s recap from Bryan Hoch.
MEMORY LANE: On June 15th, 1967, Mel Stottlemyre tossed a shutout against the Washington Senators in a 2-0 Yankees win. Mickey Mantle hit a 2-out, solo home run in the top of the sixth inning, and Mel made it stand. Joe Pepitone‘s sac-fly in the 9th added the second run. (Source: Baseball Reference) …
