Yanks Hammer Holland, Beat Rangers at LinesMaker

Yanks Hammer Holland, Beat Rangers

ARLINGTON, Texas

Derek Jeter is hit­ting the way he did in his prime and CC Sabathia looks more like his old self with each outing.

No won­der the New York Yan­kees are start­ing to get on a roll.

Jeter had four hits to stretch his hit­ting streak to 13 games, Sabathia pitched a season-high eight innings and Alex Rodriguez belted a three-run homer in a 7–4 vic­tory over the Texas Rangers on Mon­day night.

“I keep kid­ding him that it’s like 1999 again – three hits every day. He’s amaz­ing,” Rodriguez said of the 37-year-old Jeter.

“He’s play­ing like he’s 25,” man­ager Joe Girardi said. “He’s off to a great start. He feels good phys­i­cally and that’s the most impor­tant thing.”

The Yan­kees have won 10 of 13 since being swept in three games at Tampa Bay to start the season.

Sabathia (2–0) struck out eight for his 11th career win against the two-time defend­ing Amer­i­can League cham­pion Rangers, who won their first five series this season.

The big left-hander was pitch­ing with an extra day of rest after the Yan­kees’ sched­uled series finale at Boston was rained out Sun­day night, a day after New York over­came a 9–0 deficit for a 15–9 win over the Red Sox.

After a pair of six-inning out­ings with no-decisions to start the sea­son, Sabathia has won his last two starts.

“That’s more CC-like. That’s what we’re used to see­ing,” Girardi said. “I liked what I saw those last four innings against the Twins, and he car­ried it over today.”

Mar­i­ano Rivera worked a per­fect ninth for his fourth save.

Josh Hamil­ton home­red for the Rangers.

Derek Hol­land (2–1), the 25-year-old left-hander who signed a $ 28.5 mil­lion, five-year con­tract exten­sion this spring, has never beaten the Yan­kees. He gave up seven runs and nine hits with four walks and one strike­out in six innings.

Hol­land is 0–5 with a 9.26 ERA in seven career appear­ances (six starts) against New York.

“He’s been very con­sis­tent. That’s a pretty good lineup,” Rangers man­ager Ron Wash­ing­ton said. “They do their busi­ness in that batter’s box. They pick their spots and make you pay. And they made us pay tonight.”

Rodriguez hit a three-run homer, his third this sea­son and No. 632 in his career, in the fifth for a 6–1 lead. The Rangers hadn’t given up more than five runs in a game before that, and Jeter added an RBI dou­ble in the sixth.

“That’s a big three-run homer because it kind of breaks the game open a lit­tle bit,” Girardi said. “And we got a big two-out hit from Cur­tis (Grander­son) in the first.”

New York went ahead to stay when Grander­son blooped a two-run sin­gle into short right-center in the first. Jeter led off the game with an infield sin­gle and Robin­son Cano also had a single.

It was the 42nd career four-hit game for Jeter, who is bat­ting .450 (27 for 60) dur­ing his hit­ting streak and raised his sea­son aver­age to .411.

All of his hits came in the first six innings against Hol­land before he struck out in the ninth against Koji Uehara.

Since return­ing from the dis­abled July 4, just days before get­ting career hit No. 3,000 in a five-hit game, Jeter is hit­ting .346 over his past 85 games.

“When he went through his strug­gles last year, there was one thing I wasn’t going to do: I wasn’t going to doubt him,” Girardi said. “I know his heart, I know his char­ac­ter and how hard he works at what he does.”

No. 9 bat­ter Chris Stew­art drew a lead­off walk in the Yan­kees fifth and scored on Nick Swisher’s sac­ri­fice fly. Rodriguez home­red later in that inning, the ball land­ing in the recon­fig­ured vis­i­tors’ bullpen just beyond the left-center wall.

Hamilton’s AL-leading eighth homer was a 422-foot solo shot to right-center in the sixth to get Texas within 7–2. The homer came a cou­ple of pitches after his bat flew out of his hands on a swing and landed in the front row of seats past the Rangers dugout.

Before that homer, Hamil­ton was 1 for 15 with six strike­outs in his career against Sabathia.

No Rangers player had ever reached eight homers quicker in a sea­son – Hamilton’s came in the 17th game. Rodriguez needed 18 games to hit his eighth homer in 2002, his sec­ond of three sea­sons in Texas, when he went on to hit a career-best 57 homers.

Ian Kinsler led off the Rangers first with a sin­gle and scored when Hamil­ton grounded into a dou­ble play.

Craig Gen­try had a two-run dou­ble in the sev­enth for the Rangers.

NOTES: Yu Darvish (2–0) makes his sec­ond home start for Texas on Tues­day night against Hiroki Kuroda (1–2). It will be the sev­enth matchup of Japan­ese start­ing pitch­ers in major league his­tory, the first since Kuroda was with the Dodgers and faced Hisanori Taka­hashi of the Mets on July 22, 2010. … Sabathia is 4–0 in five starts against Texas dur­ing his four sea­sons with the Yan­kees. … Yan­kees LHP Andy Pet­titte will make the next start in his come­back Wednes­day for Double-A Trenton.

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more MLB base­ball news see: Yanks ham­mer Hol­land, beat Rangers.

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