ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Pitch by pitch, Chris Archer set the tone for what he and the Tampa Bay Rays hope will be a bounce-back year.

It wasn’t such a good start for Masahiro Tanaka and the New York Yankees.

Archer pitched seven solid innings, and the Rays roughed up Tanaka on the way to beating New York 7-3 in the first game of the Major League Baseball season Sunday.

“We didn’t play perfect, but we played well enough to win,” Archer said. “We scored a lot of runs and made some nice defensive plays. It’s all about winning, and we did that.”

And it’s what the Rays didn’t do often enough last season, when they sank to the bottom of the AL East with their worst finish (68-94) since 2007.

New York lost on opening day for the sixth consecutive year, with Tanaka matching the shortest start ever by a Yankees pitcher in an opener.

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“It happens. He’s human,” Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild said. “He just didn’t command anything. … He usually self corrects real well. But today, he tried a few things and it just didn’t work.”

Evan Longoria and Logan Morrison homered and drove in three runs apiece before a sellout crowd of 31,042 at Tropicana Field. Tanaka was tagged for a career-worst seven earned runs in 22/3 innings.

National League

DIAMONDBACKS 6, GIANTS 5: Chris Owings singled home the winning run and Arizona scored twice with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning off new San Francisco closer Mark Melancon to beat the Giants in Phoenix.

Derailed by a dreadful bullpen last year, the Giants started this season the same way – even after trying to fix the problem by bringing in Melancon on a $62 million, four-year contract. They wasted a record-breaking performance by ace Madison Bumgarner, who retired his first 16 batters and became the first pitcher to hit two home runs on opening day.

Arizona got a double and three singles after Melancon retired his first two batters in the ninth. A.J. Pollock singled in the tying run and Owings dumped a base hit into right field to end it.

The Giants had 32 blown saves last season, including nine in September. In their final playoff game, Manager Bruce Bochy went through five relievers in the ninth inning against the Chicago Cubs, and San Francisco was eliminated from the Division Series after allowing four runs for a 6-5 defeat.

That led to an offseason overhaul in the bullpen, headlined by the arrival of Melancon as a free agent. He saved 98 games over the past two seasons, most in the majors.


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