Washington, May 27 (BUS): Nelson Curtis had a three-stroke in the ninth, Matt Carpenter green-lighted and a three-stroke crowd on his Yankees debut, New York beat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-2 Thursday night. The first meeting of the eastern opponent this season.
Curtis (4-1) made his third straight start, scoring five goals and walking one in eight runs. The 27-year-old left-hander lowered his ERA to 1.70, retiring 14 in a row during one stint. He threw 109 throws in his career.
Andy Peralta was relieved after Wander Franco’s lead hit in ninth and allowed Manuel Margot to take a big hit in scoring and Isaac Paredes RBI before finishing off the hitter by six strokes.
Curtis came three stages away from showing the Yankees’ first full game of the season and only the fourth game by a Major League player, according to the Associated Press.
Curtis allowed three or fewer earned runs in 18 consecutive starts, two shy of the team record set by Ross Ford in 1910.
New York dealt with a string of injuries, and Carpenter signed a million-dollar deal, one year prior to the game and included him in the starting line-up when Aaron Hicks was scraped by a tight right hamstring.
The 36-year-old Carpenter, who was fired last week from the Texas minor league system, went 0-for-2 with a pair of ground runs and also walked.
Carpenter had to shave off his beard to comply with Yankees rules on facial hair but he kept a mustache.
Aaron Judge had a pair of RBIs to bring his total to 36. The Yankees opened a 5 1/2 game lead over the Rays by winning the opener for a four-game streak, the first of 10 games between the two teams in a 28-day period.
New York won their third straight after a season’s worst three-game losing streak and improved their top record for the major slams to 32-13, matching 1994’s second-best 45 game for the Yankees behind 35-10 in 1998.
Ryan Yarbro (0-1) held the Yankees through five rounds before hitting Carpenter ahead of the sixth.
Yarbro gave up three games – he got two – and two hits in 5 and 2/3
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