Yankees 6, Padres 3: Put your brooms away

Andrew Cashner had a pretty great return to Petco Park today. In six innings on the mound, he held the Yankees to two runs (only one of them earned) on six hits and two walks. Unfortunately, his offense let him down, putting up only one run this afternoon and leaving the team sweepless yet again. The one Padre with a productive afternoon was Yangervis Solarte, who went 4-4 today. But the lineup as a whole went 8-for-34 and a meager 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position.

Cashner’s unearned run came in the second inning when Alexei Ramirez’s defensive miscue turned Didi Gregorius into a leadoff runner. Aaron Hicks followed that with a single to put runners on the corners. Ronald Torreyes was kind enough to ground into a double play after that, but it didn’t stop Gregorius from scoring the first run of the day. The Yankees didn’t hold that lead long, though. Solarte led off the bottom half of the inning with a line drive that just clipped the top of the left field fence to land in the stands for his fifth homer of the year.

Gregorius took the lead back for the Yankees all on his own in the fourth inning with a homer of his own. After that both teams settled down for a few innings. Then Carlos Villanueva gave up a milestone to Mark Teixeira; the switch-hitting slugger hammered his 400th homer to put the Yankees up by two.

The wheels really came off when Kevin Quackenbush took the mound in the ninth inning. After retiring the first batter, he walked Jacoby Ellsbury, who then stole second. Brett Gardner’s single brought him home, and then Teixeira went deep again to give New York a five run lead. After allowing another single, Quack was replaced by Jose Dominguez, who wrapped up the inning without further damage.

The Friars did some damage against Anthony Swarzak in their last at bats. Solarte picked up his fourth hit of the day, and then Alex Dickerson followed up with his second bomb of the season to narrow the gap to three runs. That brought in Yankee closer Aroldis Chapman, who sent the next three batters to the dugout to end the game.

The Friars are now on the road to Arizona, where they’ll be playing at 6:10 PM tomorrow.