Nova struggles but the offense bails him out in Yankees win over K.C.

The New York Yankees defeated the Kansas City Royals by the score of 9-7 on Tuesday night. Ivan Nova made the start and struggled for the first time since coming back from the minor leagues. The bullpen pitched very well and the offense was great. Derek Jeter had another good game and Robinson Cano had a big game.
Nova pitched 5 1/3 innings giving up nine hits and seven runs with a walk and two strikeouts. He earned his 12th win to move to 12-4 on the season. He has won eight straight starts, although this was his first bad one in that stretch. This is when you really find out about a young player, when they face some adversity and see how they bounce back. Boone Logan pitched one inning and striking out one, Rafael Soriano pitched 2/3 of an inning retiring both batters he faced, one on a strikeout and Dave Robertson pitched a perfect inning with a strikeout. Rivera earned his 32nd save with a 1-2-3 inning. He struck out one and the crisis is over. The Yankees fan base was in panic mode when Rivera had a couple of bad outings but he has bounced back nicely from that with two straight saves in Kansas City.

Jeter had two hits and two RBI, Curtis Granderson had a hit and Mark Teixeira had a hit, RBI and a walk. Cano had two hits and four RBI, Nick Swisher had a hit and a walk and Jorge Posada had a pinch hit walk. Russell Martin had a hit, two RBI and a walk, Eduardo Nunez had two hits and Brett Gardner had two hits. Jeter had a double, Gardner had a triple and Cano had a homerun. The Yankees were 6-12 with runners in scoring position and they left 10 men on base. Martin threw out a runner at second base, he has been great at that this year.

The Royals took a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a Eric Hosmer RBI double and Jeff Francoeur RBI single. Cano had an RBI single and Martin had a two run single to give the Yankees a brief 3-2 lead in the third inning. In the bottom of the inning Alcides Escobar hit a triple and Alex Gordon had an RBI groundout tying the game at three. Melky Cabrera hit a solo homerun making it 4-3 Royals and Francoeur had an RBI double making it 5-3. In the fourth inning the Yankees came right back. Jeter had an RBI double to cut the lead to 5-4, Teixeira had an RBI single to tie the game at five. Cano hit a three run homerun to make it 8-5 Yankees and they never trailed again. In the bottom of the sixth Salvado Perez hit a two run double cutting the lead to 8-7. The Yankees added another run in the seventh inning for the final run of the game.

The Yankees have won the first two games of this series to win it and will go for the sweep on Wednesday night. The Yankees have moved into first placed all by themselves with the Red Sox losing to Tampa in the night cap of their doubleheader. The Yankees are ½ game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East. It was Nova’s shortest outing in a non-interleague game since May 28th. He also had a rough outing against the Royals on May 12th. The Yankees will look to extend their lead in the AL East on Wednesday night and keep it rolling.