Yankees.com: After Yu-Tanaka duel, Torreyes wins it for NY

After Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka matched zeros in a marvelous pitching matchup, the smallest Yankee delivered the night’s biggest hit, as Ronald Torreyes laced a run-scoring single to lift New York to a 2-1 victory over the Rangers in 10 innings on Friday at Yankee Stadium.

Torreyes drove home Gary Sanchez with the winning run after Brett Gardner cracked a game-tying solo home run off Matt Bush with one out in the ninth, the right-hander’s third blown save in his last five chances. Texas scored the game’s first run in the top half of the inning when Elvis Andrus came home on a passed ball.

“I’m so happy because we got the win,” Torreyes said through an interpreter. “I was just looking to hit something hard and made good contact. I was looking for something that I could drive up the middle. I’ve got to say, without Tanaka, we don’t have a chance. He was excellent tonight.”

In a way, you could argue that the Yankees’ recent malaise all began when Chris Carter made a terrible defensive play at first base that extended an inning and led to CC Sabathia injuring himself later that inning and then everything fell apart since. In the bottom of the tenth inning, after the Yankees miraculously tied the game in the ninth inning on a home run by Brett Gardner, the Yankees had runners on the corners with one out. A sac fly wins the game. Chris Carter was up…and he struck out easily, just like what everyone expected him to do. But then something special happened - Ronald Torreyes followed Carter with a game-winning single (amusingly, Torreyes celebrated on contact - you don’t often see that from hitters). And if to seemingly officially commemorate the exorcism of Carfer’s bad mojo, the Yankees then DFAed Carter and called up Tyler Austin, who is now the Yankees official starting first baseman (until he also sucks so much that they make a trade).

Masahiro Tanaka was electric. He did not just have good results, he also looked amazing in getting the results. He had total command of his pitches and he used them beautifully. His last start, he had moments when he actually looked good (dude struck out 10 in 4 innings, ya know?) but there were other times when he dicked around and got killed for it. Here, he just went right at guys. Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes Tanaka gets in trouble for going right at guys and giving up home runs, but I think that you can go right at guys and not just serve up creamballs, and that’s what Tanaka did tonight. Aroldis Chapman was almost the hard luck loser, as the go-ahead run scored on a passed ball while he was striking out Adrian Beltre for the second out of the inning, but the Yankees tied it up and got one of their most improbable wins of the season.

Luis Cessa goes Saturday afternoon and…well, the bats better wake up on Saturday, as Cessa will need all the run support he can get for the three innings that he will likely pitch.