Before returning to New York from their west coast trip, the Yankees made a little stop in Detroit to check out next year's models and face the disappointing Tigers who were 3 games under .500.
All the signs were there for the Yankees to be able to get the first game under their belt easily as the Tigers had to call up Casey Crosby to make his first career start in place of Doug Fister, who was recently sent to the DL. It didn't take the Yanks long to welcome the kid to the big leagues as by the end of the 2nd inning they had put 5 runs on the board, mainly due to a grand slam by former-Tiger Curtis Granderson.
CC Sabathia made the start for the Yankees and had a workman's type outing: going 7 innings and giving up 3 earned runs on 8 hits with 5 strikeouts for his 7th victory of 2012. In the 9th inning, with a runner on and the game well in hand for the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez added a homerun to push the score to 9-4 which is what the final score ended at. The Tigers started to threaten in the bottom of the inning, so Girardi was forced to bring out Rafael Soriano to get the last two outs for his 7th save of the season.
Off from his first road win of the season against Oakland, Hiroki Kuroda faced off against Rick Porcello and for most of the game, the two were locked in a pitcher's duel. The new David Ortiz, in terms of Yankee-killing, Miguel Cabrera, broke the tie in the 4th with a massive solo bomb to center. There was plenty of tension in the game as both Joe Girardi and hitting coach Kevin Long were tossed for arguing the strike zone. After the Yankees had scratched and clawed to tie the game at 2-2 in the 8th inning, there was Cabrera to yet again hit another solo bomb to center, this time off of Cory Wade, to make it 3-2 Tigers.
The Yankees kept on coming back as they managed a bases loaded walk-in run (although a hit would've actually been nice, but godforbid) against their tormenting dancing-idiot foe Jose Valverde, who blew the save. Only getting the single run in the 9th ending up costing the Yankees the game as the Tigers had a 4-3 walk-off in the bottom of the frame thanks for a game-winning sac-fly from Omir Santos.
On most occasions when a rubber game has to be decided upon the pitching of Phil Hughes and 2011 MVP and Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, you hand the series to the Tigers, but on this day Hughes had other things in mind. Bouncing back from an awful start a few days ago against Anaheim, Hughes shocked everyone by throwing a complete game for the first time in his career and the only run he allowed was a solo shot by Prince ("Need to showboat after hitting one") Fielder.
Just like the Angels game, the offense gave Hughes some runs early via the home run by Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, who launched one 455 feet to left!!
Hughes refused to choke away the lead this time and only gave up the one run on 4 hits with 8 strikeouts. Justin Verlander was handed his third loss in a row as a consecutive Cy Young Award looks bleak at this point. With a grueling road trip that included the Angels and the Tigers, two teams that made the biggest moves in the AL this offseason, the Yankees managed to go a pleasant 6-3 and saw signs of waking up from the likes of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, yet the 29-24 club continues to be collectively putrid with runners in scoring position....
All the signs were there for the Yankees to be able to get the first game under their belt easily as the Tigers had to call up Casey Crosby to make his first career start in place of Doug Fister, who was recently sent to the DL. It didn't take the Yanks long to welcome the kid to the big leagues as by the end of the 2nd inning they had put 5 runs on the board, mainly due to a grand slam by former-Tiger Curtis Granderson.
CC Sabathia made the start for the Yankees and had a workman's type outing: going 7 innings and giving up 3 earned runs on 8 hits with 5 strikeouts for his 7th victory of 2012. In the 9th inning, with a runner on and the game well in hand for the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez added a homerun to push the score to 9-4 which is what the final score ended at. The Tigers started to threaten in the bottom of the inning, so Girardi was forced to bring out Rafael Soriano to get the last two outs for his 7th save of the season.
Off from his first road win of the season against Oakland, Hiroki Kuroda faced off against Rick Porcello and for most of the game, the two were locked in a pitcher's duel. The new David Ortiz, in terms of Yankee-killing, Miguel Cabrera, broke the tie in the 4th with a massive solo bomb to center. There was plenty of tension in the game as both Joe Girardi and hitting coach Kevin Long were tossed for arguing the strike zone. After the Yankees had scratched and clawed to tie the game at 2-2 in the 8th inning, there was Cabrera to yet again hit another solo bomb to center, this time off of Cory Wade, to make it 3-2 Tigers.
The Yankees kept on coming back as they managed a bases loaded walk-in run (although a hit would've actually been nice, but godforbid) against their tormenting dancing-idiot foe Jose Valverde, who blew the save. Only getting the single run in the 9th ending up costing the Yankees the game as the Tigers had a 4-3 walk-off in the bottom of the frame thanks for a game-winning sac-fly from Omir Santos.
On most occasions when a rubber game has to be decided upon the pitching of Phil Hughes and 2011 MVP and Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, you hand the series to the Tigers, but on this day Hughes had other things in mind. Bouncing back from an awful start a few days ago against Anaheim, Hughes shocked everyone by throwing a complete game for the first time in his career and the only run he allowed was a solo shot by Prince ("Need to showboat after hitting one") Fielder.
Just like the Angels game, the offense gave Hughes some runs early via the home run by Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, who launched one 455 feet to left!!
Hughes refused to choke away the lead this time and only gave up the one run on 4 hits with 8 strikeouts. Justin Verlander was handed his third loss in a row as a consecutive Cy Young Award looks bleak at this point. With a grueling road trip that included the Angels and the Tigers, two teams that made the biggest moves in the AL this offseason, the Yankees managed to go a pleasant 6-3 and saw signs of waking up from the likes of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, yet the 29-24 club continues to be collectively putrid with runners in scoring position....
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