Yankees top Mariners 5-1 thanks to Sabathia’s great start, Ellsbury’s homer

Source: FanGraphs

Tuesday night’s 5-1 win over the Mariners was one of the Yankees’ best all-around games in quite a while. Just a real solid, crisp win. Good pitching, good hitting, the works. I want to see more games like this the last five and a half weeks of the season. West Coast night games get bullet point recaps, so let’s get to it:

• Si Si: Man, what a job by CC Sabathia. The big lefty held the Mariners to one Aaron Judge aided run — Judge took a circuitous route in right field on Leonys Martin’s fly ball, leading to a triple — in seven otherwise stress-free innings. He struck out seven and allowed only three hits and one walk. That was Sabathia’s best start since mid-June and one of his best of the season overall.
• Ellsburied: The Yankees scored their first run when Ronald Torreyes continued his hot hitting with a double to left. Kyle Seager committed an error earlier in the inning that opened the door for New York. The big blow of the night was Jacoby Ellsbury’s two-run home run in the fifth inning, which turned a 1-1 tie into a 3-1 Yankees lead. Ellsbury is up to six homers on the season.
• The Late Innings: Judge atoned for his bad read in right with a sixth inning sac fly to stretch the lead to 4-1. An error and a Didi Gregorius double created another insurance run in the ninth inning to make it 5-1. Nice little night for the bats. They had nine hits overall, drew three walks, and went 4-for-12 (.333) with runners in scoring position.
• Leftovers: Tommy Layne and Dellin Betances tossed scoreless eighth and ninth innings, respectively … Ben Heller warmed up in the ninth in case the Yankees blew it open. He still hasn’t made his MLB debut … Torreyes went 3-for-4 with two doubles. He’s 8-for-12 with four doubles and a homer on the road triple … Gary Sanchez had just one, hit a single. Bust!

Here are the box score, video highlights, and updated standings. Check out our Bullpen Workload and Announcer Standings pages too. The Yankees wrap up their West Coast trip with the series finale against the Mariners on Wednesday afternoon. That’s a 3:35pm ET start. Former Rakuten Golden Eagles teammates Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia will be on the mound.

Minor League Update: I have neither the time nor the energy for a full DotF tonight. Here are the box scores and here’s the short version: Rob Refsnyder and Ben Gamel had singles, Bryan Mitchell allowed one run in four innings in his latest rehab game, Thairo Estrada whacked a homer, Justus Sheffield allowed four runs (three earned) in 3.2 innings, and Freicer Perez threw six one-hit innings.