Yankees 5
Devil Rays 3
ST. PETERSBURG – Kevin Brown’s first pitch last night was clocked at 91 mph, which surely was not the hardest the 39-year-old has ever thrown. But it resulted in a harmless liner to center from Carl Crawford, and the Yankee ace went on to retire 17 of the first 18 Tampa Bay hitters he faced.
Brown, who reportedly was concerned enough about his strength and stamina to get checked out a few days ago, was once again nothing less than dominant. He allowed just three hits over 72/3 innings, and the Bombers survived a mini-comeback by the pesky Devil Rays in the eighth to secure a 5-3 victory that vaulted them into first place.
Bernie Williams, Ruben Sierra and Enrique Wilson hit solo homers, and the Yankees (30-18) won their sixth straight game to improve to 8-3 on their 12-game Trail of Destruction. They now lead Boston – which lost 5-4 to Seattle – by a half-game in the AL East.
Brown (6-1) is never satisfied with himself, but he can’t argue with his statistics. Coming off a start in which he surrendered 10 hits and five runs in 42/3 innings in Texas, he didn’t give Tampa Bay a chance.
Toby Hall led off the home third with a clean single up the middle into center, but he was the only Devil Ray to hit safely through the first seven innings.
With the Yanks leading 5-1, Hall led off the eighth by golfing a 2-2 pitch into the left-field seats. Rocco Baldelli and Aubrey Huff followed with RBI double to cut the score to 5-3, but Tom Gordon got the final night of the eighth.
Mariano Rivera pitched the ninth for his 18th save of the season and the 301st of his career.
Brown was scheduled to start on Thursday in Baltimore, but he left the team for what the club deemed “a personal issue.” The Post’s George King broke the story that he underwent tests in New York because he was concerned about stamina, strength and weight loss. His velocity supposedly has dipped, but that’s irrelevant compared to his other numbers.
Ten stints on the disabled list ago, Brown possessed the ability to consistently hit the high 90s. Those days are likely gone for good, but the righty’s sinker, determination and pitching IQ are as healthy than ever.
It’s unfair to compare Brown to his younger self, but he still compares favorably to most major-league pitchers. Take the opposing starter: Tampa’s Mark Hendrickson.
The 29-year-old lefty is a former NBA player (with four teams, including the Nets), but pure athleticism doesn’t count for much on the mound. Granted, Hendrickson was facing a far tougher lineup, but he wilted by the third and fourth times through the Yankee lineup.
Williams deposited Hendrickson’s eighth pitch of the game halfway up the left-field seats for a solo homer (his fifth) to extend his hitting streak to eight games.
The Yankees manufactured a run in the fourth following Hideki Matsui’s one-out walk. Sierra smashed a double off the wall near left-center that was just beyond the leap of the left fielder Crawford. Matsui couldn’t score from first, but he was plated when Tony Clark managed a groundout to second base with a classic piece of situational hitting.
In Sierra’s next at-bat, with one out in the sixth, he managed to hit the ball a little higher. The Yankee DH turned around a high 0-and-1 Hendrickson offering and smashed it into the first row of the left-field seats, where a man wearing a “Rays” T-shirt caught it.
The Bombers cobbled together another run after two outs on Wilson’s walk and stolen base. Derek Jeter singled near the left-field line to score Wilson for his 12th hit in his last 26 at-bats.
Brown never labored until the sixth, when he tossed 23 pitches but followed up a two-out walk to Crawford with a strikeout of Baldelli on a low-and-away sinker that registered 90 MPH. The same thing happened in the seventh, when he walked Jose Cruz Jr. and then whiffed Julio Lugo.