Yankees Lose HR Derby

I was sitting at my yearly fantasy baseball draft yesterday, when the owner next to me commented on the fact that he had both Phil Hughes and Max Scherzer (Sunday's starters) on his team. "It'll probably a 10-9 game", he said. I said, "No, they both will pitch well". Boy was I wrong.

Scherzer out pitched Hughes, but he still allowed six earned runs in five innings in the Tigers 10-7 win over the Yankees on Sunday. With the help of the wind the two teams combined for seven home runs with the Tigers' Miguel Cabrera and the Yankees' Jorge Posada hitting a pair of 2-run home runs.

The biggest concern after the game was Hughes lack of velocity (3-4 MPH less than normal) on his fastball. “There’s going to be concern until you see it,” Rothschild said. “That’s just natural. … When you get going and you start to see the velocity, then you can relax a little bit. But until then, we’ll try to figure out if there’s any routine that works for him.”

The Tigers jumped on Hughes immediately when Cabrera hit his first of the season with a man aboard in the 1st inning. Posada's first of the year off Scherzer in the 2nd tied it up, but Cabrera struck again in the 3rd. Brennan Boesch, who was 4-4, with four RBI and four runs scored, singled in the go ahead run and then watched as Cabrera crushed another long home run to left field.

The Yankees came right back to cut the deficit to one in the home half of the 3rd on solo home runs by Mark Teixeira (his third in as many games) and Robinson Cano. Joe Girardi pulled Hughes after four innings and 90 pitches, but Bartolo Colon, making his first Yankees appearnace fared no better. Boesch, who had a tremendous first half of '10 and an awful second half, launched a 2-run home run in the 5th and Colon was charged with four runs in four innings. The Tigers would tack one more on in the 9th off of Joba Chamberlain.

Posada's second blast came in the 5th and Nick Swisher added an RBI double in the 7th, but the Yankees would get no closer. Jose Valverde walked a batter in the 9th, but came away with the save in the Tigers' first win of the season.

Notes

Teixeira became the second Yankee to hit home runs in the first three games of the season, joining Dave Winfield, who accomplished the feat in 1983. Teixeira didn't hit his third home run last year until May.