Yankees 1, Angels 10, and the only real question by the middle innings was how ugly it would get. Pretty ugly, it turns out.
Walbert Urena, a name that meant nothing to most Yankees fans walking into Monday night, made sure they'd remember it walking out. Seven innings, five hits, no walks, eight strikeouts, one run allowed -- and that run came on a solo shot, not anything resembling a rally. The Angels backed him with four different innings of scoring and never looked back.
The Turning Point
It started innocently enough. Tyler Heineman doubled with one out in the third, and two batters later Vaughn Grissom lined a single to center to bring him home. 1-0 Angels, nothing more than a hiccup.
The fourth is where it actually got away from Elmer Rodriguez. Zach Neto singled home a run, and two batters after that Mike Trout laced a two-run single to left. Two singles, back-to-back-ish, and a 1-0 nail-biter turned into a 4-0 laugher before the Yankees had even come up to bat in the fifth.
Star of the Game
Give it to Urena, and it's not close. Seven innings of one-run ball against a lineup that's been scoring all season is the kind of start that wins games by itself, and he didn't need much help doing it. Grissom made his own case -- 3-for-5 with two doubles and four RBI -- but this one belonged to the guy on the mound.
Key At-Bats and Pitching Lines
The one thing worth lingering on for the Yankees: Spencer Jones. Down 4-0 in the fifth, he turned on a Urena pitch and sent it 398 feet to right-center, 105.1 mph off the bat, his eighth homer of the season. It was the only run New York scored all night, and it came against the best pitcher on the field.
Rodriguez never found his footing. Three-and-two-thirds innings, four earned runs on four hits and three walks, two batters hit -- the shortest of his six career starts since debuting in April. (Not the kind of night you want against a team that had lost seven straight coming in.)
The bullpen didn't clean anything up, either. Michael Fulmer let the Angels pad the lead in the fifth on a Christian Moore double -- one that glanced off Jones's glove in right -- and a Josh Lowe single. Luis Gil worked around traffic in the sixth, but a two-error mess from Jose Caballero, fielding error and throwing error on the same play, let another run score. David Bednar had the worst of it, three earned runs in the eighth as Grissom and Moore both drove in runs to make it 10-1.
Not that the Yankees needed the help. A pickoff throw got away in the fifth and let a run score, and Caballero's sixth-inning meltdown -- booting the ball, then throwing it away trying to recover -- made sure nothing about this one stayed close.
The Bigger Picture
The Angels came in having dropped seven straight and hadn't won at home since August 15. They picked a good night to end both streaks. For the Yankees, it snapped a two-game winning streak that closed out the Red Sox series, including a 16-1 win of their own the night before. Funny how that works.
None of it moves much. New York's still 78-60, still 4.5 back of Tampa Bay in the East, still holding a wild-card spot comfortably, three games up on Boston for the top seed. One bad night in Anaheim, game one of three.
Get one back Tuesday.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
