Rays 1, Yankees 4: Offense, Bullpen Not Sharp In Loss To Yankees

The Rays five game winning streak came to an end Monday night at the hands of the Yankees, as did their one day stay atop the American League East.

This game was pretty uneventful as a whole, so let's take a look at each three facets of the game individually.

Hitting: The biggest threat (meaning multiple men in scoring position) the offense posed was in the first inning when Steven Souza singled and Asdrubal Cabrera doubled with one out. Unfortunately, Evan Longoria struck out and James Loney grounded out to end the frame.

The lone run came in the sixth on a nifty slide by David DeJesus. After reaching on a single, advancing to second on a wild pitch and to third on a flyball to Centerfield, DeJesus scored on a fielder's choice grounder by Cabrera. With the infield in, Stephen Drew fielded the ball and made a terrible, no good, very bad throw home. The ball bounced before it got to Brian Mccann, who made a great play to even scoop it up, but DeJesus made one hell of a slide to get around the tag attempt. Another wild pitch would put a runner on second with one out, but once again Longoria and Loney failed to get the run home.

Pitching: Nathan Karns looked very good for the first 4.2 innings of this game. He'd allowed two hits and no walks while striking out five -- the curve to K Chris Young in the second inning was especially filthy. Then the wheels came off. A three at bat sequence that saw him give up a walk, single, and walk while throwing just one curveball spelled the end of his evening. This brought in Brandon Gomes, he of the career line of .278/.356/.464 against left handers to face the lefty Brett Gardner. Predictably, Gardner would walk and bring in the Yankees' first run.

The following inning McCann would hit a one-out homer with Gomes still on the mound, which was followed by a double to centerfield that would later come around to score. Everett Teaford pitched the last 2.1 innings, for some reason. More on that in a second.

Managing: I haven't had too many issues with how Cash has managed to start the season. The amount of injuries he's had to deal with has been staggering. That being said, it was still a two run game in the eighth inning when Teaford was allowed to face seven batters while no one got up in the pen. Two outs and two on against a not-very-good-pitcher making his season debut on the road and no one was warming in the pen. When Teaford walked Didi Gregorius to load the bases, no one was warming in the pen. When Teaford hit Jacoby Ellsbury to force in a run, no one was warming in the pen. I know the task of facing Andrew Miller is a daunting one, but this seemed like an inopportune time to let a pitcher like Teaford try and work himself out of a jam.