ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. _ Throughout a spring in which there was far more bad than good from CC Sabathia, the pitcher maintained all was well.
He was healthy and felt strong, the left-hander said, and the results would be there when the games counted.
They were.
Supported early by a rare _ and somewhat shocking _ jolt of power by Ronald Torreyes, Sabathia helped give the Yankees their first victory of 2017, a 5-0 defeat of the Rays at Tropicana Field.
Sabathia, who had a 6.75 ERA over four spring starts and was also hit hard in a minor-league game, threw five shutout innings Tuesday in which there were few hard-hit balls off him. Five relievers completed the five-hit shutout.
The 36-year-old allowed three hits and two walks and struck out two. Rays right-hander Jake Odorizzi, 2-1 with a 2.29 ERA against the Yankees last season, allowed four runs and seven hits over six innings.
The Yankees (1-1) hit two homers off him. Torreyes' was most surprising as few would have picked the diminutive 5-8, 150-pound utilityman with one previous career homer to be the first Yankee to go deep this season.
But he did, ripping the first pitch he saw from Odorizzi in the third out to left for a two-run homer _ Aaron Judge preceded him with a single _ to make it 2-0, by far the highlight of a three-run third.
Chase Headley homered in the sixth to make it 4-0.
Headley's opposite-field RBI single against Austin Pruitt in the eighth made it 5-0 and improved him to 5-for-8 this season.
Some drama came late when, with one out in the eighth, two batters reached on infield hits against Jonathan Holder. In came Dellin Betances, who walked Evan Longoria to load the bases. The right-hander got out of it, striking out Rickie Weeks Jr. on a curveball, then getting pinch hitter Logan Morrison to ground softly to first.
Sabathia, coming off a 2016 in which he went 9-12 with a 3.91 ERA, pitched out of the No. 2 position in the rotation.
That, of course, came more from the unpredictably of the rotation after Masahiro Tanaka than anything else. Still, a strong finish to last season gave the Yankees hope the veteran had completely made the transition from power pitcher to finesse.
"I think he learned how to pitch with the stuff that he had," Joe Girardi said before the game.
The Yankees did most of their damage in the third.
After Torreyes' homer, Brett Gardner doubled to right and Matt Holliday's two-out double that was lost in the roof by leftfielder Peter Bourjos made it 3-0.
Sabathia came back with a 1-2-3 shutdown inning, aided by his defense.
Daniel Robertson led off with a grounder to short, where Torreyes fielded the ball cleanly but threw a tad wide to Greg Bird at first. Umpire Dan Bellino ruled Bird's foot came off the bag, but the first baseman immediately signaled to the dugout for a challenge. The replay showed Bird did hold the bag.
Bourjos followed with a line shot that Headley snared for the second out. Next came leadoff man Steven Souza Jr., who chopped one back up the middle. The ball glanced off the top of Sabathia's glove, trickling into no-man's land behind the mound. But a charging Torreyes barehanded the ball and threw Souza out, leaving Sabathia in a brief state of disbelief.
Longoria walked with one out and Tim Beckham got aboard on an infield single in the fourth, but Sabathia escaped when Brad Miller grounded into a fielder's choice.
Two more Rays reached in the fifth with two outs but again Sabathia wriggled out of trouble, getting Keven Kiermaier to bounce back to him on the first pitch of the at-bat.
