CC Sabathia earns first win in more than a year as Yankees swat five HR

The New York Yankees’ bats were hot on Monday on the road at Tampa Bay and that gave starter CC Sabathia some confidence and ultimately helped him earn his first win since April 24, 2014. 

The Yankees belted five home runs, including another shot off the surprisingly powerful bat of Alex Rodriguez, and cruised to an 11-5 victory at Tropicana Field. Chase Headley and Brett Gardner added three-run homers and Carlos Beltran and Mark Teixeira also homered. 

Sabathia didn’t start well. He walked the first two batters and gave up a run on a double by Logan Forsythe, but he settled down and faced the minimum three batters in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings. Sabathia pitched seven innings, giving up six hits and three earned runs with a seaso-high nine strikeouts. 

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Forsythe eventually got to Sabathia again in the seventh inning hitting the first of back-to-back solo homers with Joey Butler. Sabathia also gave up another run later in the inning but managed to get out of inning and let the New York bullpen take it from there. 

Sabathia was 0-5 with a 5.45 ERA entering the game. He went at least six innings in his two most recent starts but he was able to get strikeouts Monday that he wasn’t getting prior to this outing. He managed to lower the ERA to 5.20 by the end of the outing but his first notch in the win column was all that mattered in the clubhouse. 

“He’s loved in here,” said Headley, told Newsday.com “So it was great to finally see him get that first win.”

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[Kyle Ringo is a contributing writer to Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo