ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Pick one of Curtis Granderson’s body parts and chances are good it was wrapped in ice last night.
Granderson started the evening with a sore left foot after fouling a ball off it Tuesday night. In the fifth inning last night, he ran into the center field fence to deny Evan Longoria of at least a two-run double. In the sixth inning, he fouled a ball off the right calf. To make the evening completely painful, Granderson took a high-octane fastball in the back from David Price in the eighth inning.
By the time Granderson was done detailing the hurts, it was almost easy to overlook his two-run homer in the first inning that helped carry the Yankees to a 4-0 win over the faltering Rays in front of 21,505 at Tropicana Field.
“The back is the worst thing right now but it should be OK,” said Granderson, who said the 95-mph heater drilled him between the shoulder blades. “For the most part it’s all right. I stayed in the game.”
The victory, which went to Freddy Garcia, kept the Yankees 1½ lengths behind the AL East-leading Red Sox. It also sends the Yankees into tonight’s series finale with CC Sabathia on the mound riding a seven-game win streak.
“You can’t say enough good things about Grandy,” Joe Girardi gushed.
Almost everything said about Granderson this year has been positive. Following a four-month struggle to start last season, his first as a Yankee, Granderson played well in the final two months. Now he is viable AL MVP candidate thanks to 26 homers and 70 RBIs.
Garcia, who was very pedestrian last week in Toronto, went 6 2/3 innings, allowed eight hits, didn’t walk a batter and fanned seven as he improved to 8-7. Boone Logan, David Robertson and Mariano Rivera provided 2 1/3 innings of scoreless relief, and it was Logan who blew a 94-mph fastball by Casey Kotchman to end the seventh with runners at the corners and the Yankees leading 2-0.
Two innings earlier, it appeared Garcia had given up two runs that would have tied the score when Longoria drove a 1-2 pitch to deep center. Unlike Tuesday night when Granderson lost a ball in the cement-colored ceiling and helped the Yankees blow a lead, Granderson tracked the ball all the way as he moved toward the wall.
When he got onto the warning track, Granderson extended his right arm to feel for the padded wall, which separated when his hand hit it. At the same time Granderson gloved the ball and crashed to the wall. The collision sent him to the ground.
“When he hit it, I thought I had a shot,” Granderson said. “I wanted to get back and see what would happen. There is not much behind the wall. It looked worse than I was.”
After Derek Jeter opened the game with a single against Price (9-8), Granderson spanked a 1-2 pitch over the right-field wall to give Garcia a 2-0 lead. It was Granderson’s 10th homer off lefties.
Working with a sharp splitter and using a cutter, change-up and a fastball clocked in the 88 to 90-mph range, Garcia kept the anemic-hitting Rays off balance.
The Rays left two on in the first, two on in the third , one in the fourth and two in the fifth against Garcia.
Garcia said the biggest difference between last night and last week in Toronto was location of his off-speed stuff.
“It was down,” he said. “If it’s like that, I can get people out.”
Having Granderson patrolling the middle of the outfield doesn’t hurt, either.