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New York Yankees Lose Series To Kansas City Royals Being Shutout Sunday Afternoon

By Kenneth Teape

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New York Yankees Lose Series To Kansas City Royals With Shutout Loss Sunday Afternoon

It was a rough Sunday afternoon for the New York Yankees, were handled easily in a shutout at the hands of the Kansas City Royals. Chris Capuano was brought off the 15-Day DL when Chase Whitley went down to take his spot in the rotation, and it did not go well Sunday.

Capuano drew a difficult matchup for his first start of the season, taking on one of the deepest lineups in baseball in the Royals. The top five hitters in their lineup all hit .299 or higher, making for a difficult day for anyone, especially someone making their first appearance.

The Royals wasted no time putting pressure on Capuano, who only threw one clean inning on the afternoon. He was able to get out of the first inning without surrendering a run, but was not so lucky in the second as Salvador Perez launched his fifth home run of the season over the leftfield wall.

He was then able to get through the third inning unschatched, but unraveled in the fourth inning as he went through the Royals lineup for the second time. He walked Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer to start the inning and both would come around in subsequent at-bats, as Kendrys Morales and Perez had back-to-back RBI singles to push the score to 3-0.

At that point, Capuano was lifted from the game, but Esmil Rogers served up a double to Omar Infante, scoring Morales and charging a fourth earned run to Capuano. Rogers would retire the next three batters though to stop the bleeding.

In his first start of season Capuano left a lot to be desired, as he pitched 3+ innings, surrendering four hits and two walks, equaling out to four runs and striking out four. He should have more opportunities as the Yankees don’t really have any other options for the fifth spot in their rotation right now, but have to hope for better things to come from the veteran.

Opposing Capuano today on the mound was Edinson Volquez, and for as poor as Capuano performed Volquez performed the exact opposite. He mowed down the Yankees all afternoon, throwing seven shutout innings. The Yankees never really even threatened Volquez, as they managed only three base runners against him in seven innings, as an Alex Rodriguez double turned out to be the only time a Yankee got past first base against Volquez.

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The Yankees were then dominated by Wade Davis in the eighth inning, and threatened against Jason Frasor in the ninth to break up the shutout but Cain made a nice catch in centerfield against Didi Gregorius to put the finishing touches on the game.

This was the first shutout the Yankees suffered this season, and with the loss they dropped the series to the Royals. This is the third series of the last four that the Yankees have lost, as they have sputtered a little bit since sweeping the Boston Red Sox two weeks ago.

Next up for the Yankees will be the finish to their road trip with a two-game visit to the Washington Nationals to start the week.

Next: Is Michael Pineda Better Than Matt Harvey?

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