Yanks Lose In A Very Sloppy First-Half Finale

It's been an up and down first half for the Yankees, from the hot start to the sluggish past month. No player on the Yankees has had a more up and down year than CC Sabathia. After back to back solid starts, CC was looking to finish off the first half of the season in style.

Things just didn't go Sabathia's way as he endured one of the worst starts of his season, giving up eight runs, three earned, on eight hits while walking two and striking out five in only four innings. It was the shortest non-injury or rain shortened outing for CC as a Yankee since lasting only 2 2/3 against the Rays on Oct. 2nd, 2009.

"I have to make better pitches to try to help these guys out," said Sabathia. "They've bailed me out of situations all the time. It's frustrating because you didn't help these guys out."

Sabathia started the game with an easy 1-2-3 first inning, but then Minnesota cracked the code in the second, using four hits, all singles, to tag CC with a pair of runs.

After a Justin Morneau double in the third inning, he advanced to third on a Eduardo Nunez throw that pulled Lyle Overbay off the bag at first, that would have ended the inning. Instead, the next batter, Aaron Hicks, took a changeup from Sabathia and put it into the seat in left to make it a 5-0 game.

Things only got worse for the Yankees, trailing 5-1 after an RBI single by Cano in the top half of the inning, Brian Dozier doubled on a ball that bounced past Ichiro and Vernon Wells in right-center field. After Joe Mauer walked to load the bases, Morneau pitted a ball in between a pack of infielders that would fail to make a play.

"It's unusual," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "Our defense has been really good this year. For whatever reason, it wasn't today. We made some mistakes and gave them extra outs, and it cost us."

The Twins scored two more runs in the inning on a missed ball by Overbay, prompting Girardi to take Sabathia out of the game after four inning with his pitch count reaching 93.

"This wasn't [good]. It's just one game, though, and we've got four days to kind of get away from it and kind of revive everything," Overbay said.

Girardi gave the ball to Preston Clairborne, who fired off a solid 1-2-3 fifth inning, striking out two of the three batters he faced. Adam Warren followed him with two innings of one-run relief, holding the Twins to only four hits.

The Yankees bats didn't do a whole lot to put them into a position to win, managing three runs through the first four innings off of Twins starter Kyle Gibson, who allowed three runs, two earned, on five hits over five inning of work.

Ichiro broke a long Yankee drought in the 7th inning, homering to right field off of Caleb Thielbar. It was the first homerun by a Yankee not named Cano or Overbay since June 26th. His solo shot pulled the Yankee back within four, making it 8-4.

Minnesota added another run in the 8th off Warren, then Girardi went to Boone Logan, who did a good job of setting down Mauer and Morneau to end the inning.

Yet with all the good the Yankees bullpen was doing, they still couldn't pull off anything offensively, losing to the Twins 10-4 in a very sloppy game from the Yankees. There may have only been two errors on the board, but overall it wasn't a good way to head into the All-Star break.

"It was just one of those games where everything we could do wrong, we did wrong, defensively," Wells said. "That was probably one of the uglier games seen in this stadium, for sure."

With Minnesota taking two of the three games in this series, the Twins walked out of the Bronx with a very well series win against the Yankees, who have now lost five of their last eight games.

"Losing is disappointing, no matter how you do it," Wells said. "The way this game played out, with just how ugly it was, it'll be good to quickly forget about."

The Yankees finished the first half of the season at 51-44, trailing the Red Sox in the AL East by 6.5 games, who the Yankees will meet in Boston to start a three-game series on Friday to open up the second half.

"I think everybody in here knows what we're up against and what we need to do to try to make the playoffs and win this division," Sabathia said. "It's just up to us to come out and play consistent and play the way we can play."

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