June 5, 2012, Bronx, N.Y. – Nothing went right for James Shields and the Tampa Bay Rays in Yankee Stadium Tuesday night, a game in which they were shut out, 7-0. They scored no runs, struck out 10 times and, before Freddy Garcia came on to get the last five outs in mop-up capacity, their offense produced two singles, a number their defense “topped” with three errors.

Going into this game with a sub-.200 batting average, Yankee catcher Russell Martin reached “Big Game James” for two hits, and three on the night, including a fourth-inning grand slam that effectively ended Tampa’s hopes. The home team had more extra base hits than the Rays collected singles off the Yankee starter. And when Martin delivered his big blow, it represented add-on runs, because the Yanks were already up 2-0 on the first of three Tampa miscues.

The errors are important because all three were committed by the infield, and two of them came when they were in “overshift” mode. The baseball world was abuzz when Tampa Manager Joe Maddon started the 2012 basebaall season deploying his infield in wildly different configurations from batter to batter. They managed to frustrate much of the attack as the Bombers visited Tampa in the first series in early April, with no apparent problems. The success the Rays achieved has had teams copying their strategies through the season’s first two months. But twice Tuesday night Rays players made bad plays fielding routine grounders in unaccustomed positions.

All of which is simply prologue to Tampa’s real problem Tuesday night. What they got was just entirely too much of dandy Andy Pettitte, New York’s veteran southpaw returned from the ranks of the retired. If anyone was harboring thoughts that there was anything gimicky – as in newfangled defensive strategies – about Pettitte’s return to the field of play, that was put to sleep Tuesday night. After Andy retired two Rays on fly balls around a strike out in the first inning, Tampa had all of one fly ball left in them in the next 22 batters, a routine opposite-field floater to Raul Ibanez in left field off the bat of ex-Yankee Hideki Matsui.

With Andy pounding mostly fastballs that topped out at 90 and cutters in the low eighties, considering Pettitte’s masterpiece numerically devolves into a boring list of way-above-the-norm performance. The 70/33 strikes/balls ratio reflected the textbook 2-to-1 plus some. He missed only eight times on first pitches to 25 batters and, in an anomaly, tossed exactly 12 strikes in three different innings. The 32 strikes that hit bats became the few fly balls, eight ground outs, and one pop-up. But when the veteran portsider removed the bats from Tampa hands, he did it by striking out five straight swinging in the second and third innings. It took all of 24 pitches, and featured 10 of the 17 times Pettitte got the visitors to swing and miss on the night.

On offense, a close look reveals that five Yankee starters went hitless. But Martin’s heroics, combined with two hits apiece by Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher, came out looking like overkill. Seven different Yankees scored, but when Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez crossed home plate on the initial miscue in the first, the home team could have stopped right there. But don’t look to the Yankee catcher to give up his four rbi’s.

Early June is just jampacked with Lou Gehrig highlights, and June 5 is no exception, as the Iron Horse played in his 1,700th consecutive game on this day in 1936, in a 4-3 win over Cleveland. And Mickey Mantle legged out his third inside-the park home run in a month on June 5, 1958, in a 12-5 win over Early Wynn and the White Sox.

On June 5, 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall unveiled the plan, named in his honor, to help the nations of Europe recover from what was the disaster of World War II. Sixty-five years later, Yankee starter Andy Pettitte, secretary of an effectively rejuvenated Yankee rotation, had a plan to deal with Tampa Bay. He allowed two singles while retiring 22 opponents, following,

The Pettitte Plan

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!