{"id":23028,"date":"2012-05-10T10:59:05","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T15:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=23028"},"modified":"2012-05-10T10:59:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T15:59:05","slug":"mlb-preview-2012-tampa-bay-rays-vs-new-york-yankees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/mlb-preview-2012-tampa-bay-rays-vs-new-york-yankees-23028\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Preview 2012: Tampa Bay Rays vs. New York Yankees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tampa Bay Rays (20-11) and New York Yankees (16-14) will close out an American League East series on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium, with the first pitch scheduled for 7:05 ET<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay Rays at New York Yankees\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The New York Yankees are hoping CC Sabathia can turn the tables on the Tampa Bay Rays<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tampa Bay certainly benefited from New York being without future Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera on Wednesday night, coming away with a 4-1 road victory by scoring four runs in the top of the ninth inning.\u00a0 The Rays have now won four of the first five games against the New York Yankees in 2012, while pushing their record to 7-5 versus divisional opponents overall.\u00a0 Offensively, the team is without star third baseman Evan Longoria, as it looks to fill the void with a quartet of players.\u00a0 The group is hitting .351 in his absence since May 2.\u00a0 Tampa Bay is 5-4 versus left-handed starters, with the \u201cover\u201d going 5-3-1 in those contests.<\/p>\n

Rays starting pitcher David Price (5-1, 2.35 ERA) has led the club to five wins in his six starts, including a 7-2 home victory over the Oakland Athletics last time out, surrendering one run and three hits over eight frames.\u00a0 The left-hander is 2-1 with a 4.20 ERA in three road outings, as opponents are hitting .300 against him.\u00a0 In 14 career appearances (13 starts) versus the Yankees, Price has tallied a 5-2 record and 3.96 ERA, including a 2-1 mark and 4.54 ERA in six outings at the new Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n

New York shouldn\u2019t give up on David Robertson in his new role of being the team\u2019s closer, but manager Joe Girardi will need to keep a close eye on the situation.\u00a0 \u201cThis could be tough for him, but this is a pretty resilient kid,\u201d Girardi commented after the game.\u00a0 It was a surprising result in front of a nationally-televised audience, considering the right-hander didn\u2019t allow an earned run in his previous 27 regular-season frames.\u00a0 The club is now 3-5 in May, while going 34-32 over the course of this month the last two-plus years.\u00a0 New York is also 1-3 as a home favorite of minus-125 to minus-150 this season.<\/p>\n

Yankees starting pitcher CC Sabathia (4-0, 4.15 ERA) has led the club to five consecutive wins, including a 6-2 road win over the Kansas City Royals last time out, giving up two runs and seven hits over eight frames.\u00a0 The left-hander has registered a perfect 2-0 record and 2.93 ERA in two home starts, as opposing hitters are batting just .145 against him.\u00a0 In 25 career starts versus the Rays, Sabathia has tallied a winning 9-7 mark and 3.25 ERA, while receiving a no-decision in a 7-6 road setback in his first start of the 2012 campaign.\u00a0 He allowed five runs and eight hits over six frames in that effort.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Rays due to their 6-2 mark in Price\u2019s last eight road starts, while the Yankees are 0-5 in their last five games in this series with Sabathia taking on Price.<\/p>\n

Make sure to check out our Major League Baseball picks<\/a> all season long and get the most up-to-date betting odds at Bookmaker<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tampa Bay Rays (20-11) and New York Yankees (16-14) will close out an American League East series on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium, with the first pitch scheduled for 7:05 ET Tampa Bay Rays at New York Yankees\u00a0 Tampa Bay certainly benefited from New York being without future Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[2889,265,397,149,150,785],"class_list":["post-23028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-american-league-east","tag-cc-sabathia","tag-david-price","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-yankee-stadium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23030,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028\/revisions\/23030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}