Struggling Yanks Fall to Orioles to Open 4-Game Set

ORIOLES 5 - YANKEES 2

Nobody said this was going to be easy. The Yankees, a team with the highest of expectations continued their sluggish ways Thursday, dropping a 5-2 decision to the Baltimore Orioles at the Stadium, as New York failed to manage much offense against a Baltimore staff that was ranked 27th in Major League Baseball in team ERA coming into the night.

It hasn't been fun for Aaron Boone and the Yankees thus far. Sure they have seen flashes of brilliance, like they did from Giancarlo Stanton on Opening Day in Toronto, and on Wednesday against Tampa Bay when Stanton, Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorios, and Gary Sanchez all went deep.

But outside of those couple of moments, New York is struggling to get its footing in the early season. They are hitting .231 as a team, ranked 20th in baseball. And they own a team on base percentage of .317, which is only five points higher than the lowly San Diego Padres.

Oh, and both Stanton and Boone have been booed heavily by Yankee fans thus far. Some fans are even calling for Boone's head after he botched a game in Toronto last weekend.

It hasn't been fun yet.

Thursday it didn't get much better. What started out as a brilliant pitchers duel between Mashairo Tanaka and Andrew Cashner turned into a nightmare for New York. It seemed all was going according to scripture, the  Yankees finally scratched out a run in the bottom of the sixth on an Aaron Judge home run to right to take a 1-0 lead. With Tanaka dominating, all he needed was to complete the seventh before turning it over to the backend of the pen. Voila a Yankees 1-0 win. Right? Wrong.

After a Jonathan Schoop single to lead off the seventh inning, Adam Jones delivered the kiss of misery with a two-run bomb to left to hand the Orioles a 2-1 lead, silencing Yankee Stadium.

What started off as a wound, turned into a hemorrhage for the Yankees, as the Orioles scratched out three more runs in a five-run seventh inning to take a commanding 5-1 lead.  Anthony Santander ended Tanaka's day when he ripped a double to right-center to score Tim Beckham. A new pitcher and a few batters later, Trey Mancini brought home two more runs on a single to right.

New York's last, fleeting chance to score came in the eighth inning when they loaded the bases for former Met Neil Walker, and the ex-Met showed why the other New York team was happy to let him go as Walker grounded out to pitcher Darren O'Day to end the threat.

At 4-3 the Yankees are two games back of the Red Sox, who won their home opener against Tampa Bay on Thursday 3-2. The Red Sox are now 6-1. Both rivals will meet up next week in Fenway. Until then, the Yankees will dance three more times with the Orioles this weekend. CC Sabathia gets the ball Friday against Kevin Gausman; first pitch is at 7:05.