They say “you can’t win them all.” But I think that is supposed to apply to the 162-game baseball schedule generally. I would argue that when your starter throws a one-run complete game that goes the full nine innings, you should in fact “win them all.” Alas.
Orlando Hernández’s gem was wasted by the combination of a solo home run off the bat of a future Hall of Famer, and the offensive ineptitude of the Yankees. Worse, Derek Jeter left the game due to injury and ended up missing two weeks for the defending World Series champions.
May 11: Yankees 0, Devil Rays 1 (box score)
Record: 22-10, .688 (2.5 GA)
The story of this game begins the night before. Rain postponed that contest. In a bit of a funk at the dish, Derek Jeter took to the cages to get some extra swings in. For his trouble, he received a strained abdominal muscle in his left side. It wasn’t enough to keep him out of this contest, but Joe Torre was watching his transcendent shortstop carefully.
Jeter’s malady quickly reared its head. In the top of the second, Jeets ranged to his right for a groundball before flipping to second to get the force out. Unfortunately, his grimace gave away his discomfort. He remained in the game initially but when the Yankees came out for the top of the third, Clay Bellinger was at shortstop. Jeter was gone for two weeks recovering from the injury, just the second time in his young but already brilliant career that he missed more than a game or two.
Meanwhile, El Duque and Tampa starter Steve Trachsel kept spinning up zeroes in the run column.
The Yankees got their best chance in the home sixth. With Chuck Knoblauch on second after a double, Bellinger launched a ball to the opposite field. But Devil Rays left fielder Greg Vaughn, he of the career -6.1 defensive rWAR, got in position in front of the left-field wall, leapt, and robbed Bellinger of a two-run dinger.
Not to fall victim to famed philosopher Michael Kay’s “Fallacy of the Predetermined Outcome“ (baseball really is a game for intellectuals when you think about it), but that would have been enough the way El Duque was setting them up and mowing them down.
He only made one mistake all night. And he made it the very next half-inning, to a man with a nickname perhaps as cool as his own. “The Crime Dog” Fred McGriff strode to the plate with one out. Hernández left a ball in the middle of the plate and the future Hall of Famer didn’t miss. One of his 493 career round-trippers sailed into the Bronx night, breaking the scoreless tie.
That was enough to win it, though McGriff did his very best to add to the Tampa lead in the ninth. Unfortunately for him, Paul O’Neill had something to say about it. Paulie snagged a sinking liner to right field off McGriff’s bat and quickly fired back into the infield to double off Vaughn from first base. Petty vengeance against the two Devil Rays who helped sink the Yankees on this night, but sometimes petty vengeance is all we have.
El Duque deserved a better fate on this night. When a fella throws a 110-pitch, one-run shutout, it really feels like he should at the very least get a no-decision, if not a win 99 percent of the time. But baseball is a fickle sport sometimes. Look up “hard luck loss” in the dictionary. The story of this game should be there waiting for you.
Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.