George Kirby solid for Mariners, but Yankees’ Gerrit Cole better in 3-1 New York win

NEW YORK – The disappointment on George Kirby’s face couldn’t be hidden and he seemed almost apologetic after an outing in which he had no reason to be contrite.

He wanted to be better for his team. He wanted to be better for all those people who came specifically to watch him pitch. He wanted to be better for all the other people back home who said they’d be watching on television.

As a kid growing up in Rye, New York, about a 45-minute train ride north of New York City, he grew up watching the powerhouse Yankees teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s, dreaming of someday stepping on the mound of Yankee Stadium as a big league pitcher.

That dream became a reality on Tuesday evening with so many family members and friends in attendance.

“I was fired up,” Kirby said. “I wish I could’ve done a little bit better.”

Kirby has had better outings this season, including a previous start against the Yankees in Seattle, but he did what was expected of the Mariners starting pitchers – give the team a chance to win.

He did just that, working through a shaky start in which he allowed three runs in the first two innings and didn’t allow the Yankees to score over the next five innings.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.

Yankees ace right-hander Gerrit Cole was simply better, delivering another dominant outing in a season filled with them, to lead the Yankees to a 3-1 victory over the Mariners.

With his team having lost a season-high four games in a row, Cole pitched 7⅓ innings, allowing one run on four hits with a walk and eight strikeouts to improve to 8-1 on the season with a 2.64 ERA.

“Gerrit Cole was on top of his game,” manager Scott Servais said. “He’s been a good pitcher in this league for a long time. You’ve got your best shot if you get on him early. And then as the game got going, he got in a pretty good groove there and it was tough to get anything.”

In 16 starts this season, he’s allowed two runs of fewer in 13 of them. But in true a measure of staff ace, the Yankees are 7-0 in games when Cole starts after they’ve lost the previous game. Cole has a personal 4-0 record in those games with a 1.87 ERA.

Kirby didn’t see any of Cole’s outing and what he was up against.

“I just go out there and do my thing,” he said. “I don’t watch games for a reason. I go in the tunnel because I don’t want to worry about that stuff.”

Leading up to his start in New York, Kirby was asked how many people from his how town would be making the trip to see him pitch. He said, “Probably half the town.”

It was difficult to know whether he was being serious or joking with the statement. With a listed population of just over 16,000, there probably wasn’t half the town among the announced crowd of 43,130.

But there were more than a couple of hundred Kirby fans in various sections and they made their presence known. Most were hoping for a repeat of Kirby’s May 31 outing in Seattle against the Yankees, where he used 42 four-seam fastballs and 21 two-seam fastballs and precise location to throw a career-high eight shutout innings, allowing three hits with no walks and seven strikeouts.

The Yankees obviously took note of Kirby’s previous pitching plan. They came out ready to hit his fastball and looking for opportunities to do so.

The Yankees picked up a cheap run in the first inning. With two outs and Gleyber Torres on first base thanks to a bloop single, Anthony Rizzo hammered a fastball from Kirby to right-center. On most days, it would be a sure home run and Rizzo appeared to think so off the bat, watching and walking toward first base. A steady wind, however, knocked down the high fly ball giving Teoscar Hernandez a chance to make the catch at the wall. But he made an awkward half-jumping attempt. The ball hit off his glove and went for run-scoring “double.”

“It’s a tough play,” Servais said. “But anytime an outfielder gets leather on it, they all feel they should bring that ball in and make that play. It wasn’t the play that cost us the game, but outs are critical and it ended up being a big run.”

An inning later, Kirby thought he had an out when Harrison Bader hit a routine ground ball to second base. But Jose Caballero was shifted more toward second base and it went for a single. After Bader stole second base, Kirby made a mistake on a full count to Billy McKinney.

“It was a 3-2 heater right down the middle,” Kirby said. “It was not a good pitch.”

One of several well-traveled and largely unknown players filling the Yankees’ roster due to injuries, the 28-year-old McKinney – a first-round pick of the Athletics in 2013 – showed that nonstars will also do damage on those sorts of mistakes. He homered into the seats in right-center for a 3-0 lead. The two-run blast was McKinney’s second homer of the season.

But to Kirby’s credit, he didn’t let the outing spin out of control. He kept firing strikes and getting outs, turning to his off-speed stuff to counter the Yankees fastball-hunting plan.

“I wish I could’ve gotten those first two innings a little better,” he said. “But I’m gonna compete … every time I’m out there. I did my best to go as long as I could. And I did that tonight, but came up short.”

The Mariners’ lone run came on Jarred Kelenic’s RBI double to left field that was nearly a two-run homer. But they never really threatened beyond that one moment.