The NY Yankees and New York Mets are playing on the MLB schedule Thursday and the final game of their interleague series in the Subway Series comes from Citi Field and the matchup starts at 7:10 pm ET on the MLB Network and will be streaming online as Jacob deGrom and Chase Whitley start for the first time in their careers head to head for the fourth game of the series.
The Yankees need a nice start from Whitley, as the bullpen has been taxed and they are dealing with injuries as well. The Yankees lost Shawn Kelly to an injury and getting a complete game shutout from Masahiro Tanaka helped things on Wednesday night and now the Yankees will try to go for two in a row after losing six straight to the Mets. The two teams are close in records and the Yankees are one game up over .500 and the Mets are one below and they each are hoping to get a victory in the Subway series finale.
The Yankees come into the game after defeating the Mets and after this they will play against the Pittsburgh Pirates in another interleague series and that will be at home. The team has David Phelps starting Game 1 of that series and they come into the game ranked 10th in the league in runs. The team is third in batting average, but they have had some power outages on offense as of late and they are hoping the nice win against the Mets is the start of a new streak. The team is in the top 10 in on base and slugging percentage and it's the pitching that has been rough, as the team ranks in the bottom half of the league in ERA, quality starts and BAA.
Masahiro Tanaka showed why he is worth the money and he improved to 5-0 on the season and won his first game in the Subway Series and threw his first complete game shutout and he will be key for the Yankees if they want to contend this season. The team is dealing with a ton of injuries in the pitching rotation and with CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda out, they need Tanaka to be the stud that he clearly is. Tanaka now has not lost a regular season game since 2012 and he will get the chance to continue that streak in his next start.
Jacoby Ellsbury is in his first big slump of the season and Mark Teixeira has been heating up, as he has seven home runs in the past 15 games and he had one against the Mets and the Yankees could use that again on Thursday. The Mets come into the game ranked 17th in runs and 19th in slugging percentage and they are looking to get that right and now they are starting to bring up more of their pitchers with Dillon Gee on the DL. The team lost Matt Harvey for the season to Tommy John and the Mets are hoping next season they can finally start contending.
Check here for the NY Yankees and New York Mets live coverage of the Subway Series.