Bronx, N.Y., April 14, 2011 – Start No. 3 of Phil Hughes’s 2011 season Thursday night was more of the same, while game 2 vs. the hot Orioles was not. Both were disturbing developments. A mixture of 90 mph fastballs with regular cutters and a few curves got Phil eight outs against the struggling Baltimore bats until the sky started falling, and Jake Arrieta showed that Chris Tillman’s Wednesday start was just a bad outing, and the early promise the young O’s rotation has shown is for real.
Nick Markakis broke through for the Orioles with a long line-drive, two-run home run to right in the top of the third, and his run-scoring double nine batters later in the fifth brought the Yankee righty’s evening to a close. In between Luke Scott’s double and drives to the center and right field walls, respectively, each corralled on great plays by Curtis Wilkerson and then Nick Swisher, led to runs. When Markakis scored on a Vlad Guerrero single off reliever Bartolo Colon, the visitors had a 5-0 lead, and the Yanks had yet to get a hit off Arrieta.
Alex Rodriguez, who had walked but was erased on a double play in the second, broke that spell with a double in the bottom of the fifth, and Robinson Cano scored him one pitch later with an opposite-field two-base hit that Scott failed to make a play on. Brian Roberts’s fine play on a 3-2 Granderson bouncer over second base held the Yanks right there two outs later. But the spell was broken and the Bombers were after Arrieta from the outset in the sixth. Russell Martin and Derek Jeter singles set it up, and Mark Teixeira’s single and A-Rod’s sac fly delivered a run apiece.
That closed the score to 5-3, and got Arrieta out of the game, with right-hander Jason Berken on for the home seventh. But what followed a 10-pitch Swisher walk to start the frame closed the lead to one because Grandy doubled Nick to third from where he scored on a Martin grounder to short that looked to be a base hit. Cesar Izturis not only knocked the ball down, he pegged the Yankee catcher out, with Derrek Lee somehow catching a strange short hop, a play that for the time being rendered the Yankee comeback one run short.
The five-run lead was closed to 5-4, and Bartolo Colon gets full credit for that. If the hard shots off Hughes had the O’s batters thinking they had turned a corner, they needed to think again as Colon used just four swings and misses to strike out three of the first five batters he faced. He retired nine of 11 into the eighth when a nine-pitch Scott walk and an Adam Jones single got him into first-and-third, one-out trouble.
The wins where thunder gets the Bombers up early and the closing trio in the pen holds it has mlb talking Yankee relievers, but this night showed an even more impressive side of the New York bullpen. Colon got them nine tough outs; Joba Chamberlain trotted in and posted five more on just 13 throws, though a weird play at the plate helped him — and the Yankees — keep the score right where it was. He fired a wild pitch past Mark Reynolds, but Martin grabbed the carom off the back wall behind the plate and pegged to Joba to nab pinch runner Felix Pie at the plate. A strike out ended the eighth, another started the ninth, and the Yanks prepared to face Baltimore closer Kevin Gregg in the bottom of the ninth still one run down.
One pitch later it was a tie game as Jorge Posada blasted his fifth home run of the season, and second in two nights. Granderson doubled but the Yanks failed to plate him and the game went to extras. Using a double play to escape a leadoff single, Mariano Rivera got the game to the Yankee offense, a crew that looked confident and eager to take this one and end it. Teixeira walked, and A-Rod doubled him to third, from where Swisher’s liner to right one out later scored him for a 6-5 win, and the first Yankee “pie” party of the season.
And that wasn’t the only first this year: It was easily the best evening for baseball in the Bronx in 2011. With temps in the 60s, but sinking, as most arrived, it was a gorgeous night, and some great defense on both sides of the ball bespoke athletes “feeling it,” confident that their skills would prevail under these ideal conditions. Brett Gardner made a nice stab of a sinking Matt Wieters liner to end the top of the seventh, and Jeter snatched a Guerrero grounder up the middle that was past him and threw him out in the eighth.
The 10th inning had me scratching my head at managerial strategy on both sides of the ball. First had Girardi pinch-run Eduardo Nunez for the lumbering Teixeira after the leadoff walk, he probably would have scored on the Rodriguez double. With an underutilized Eric Chavez on the bench it was worth considering, and even more so once Tex was on third. Mark scored on Swish’s liner because it was over Markakis’s head in right. Had it come down 10 feet shorter, one of the better right field arms in the American League would likely have nailed Teixeira at the plate.
And what was with ex-Yank (et al) skipper Buck Showalter, pitching to Robinson Cano with the winning run on third and first base open in that final frame? As it turned out, the Yankee second baseman’s liner found Izturis’s glove. But once the first out was recorded, the O’s would have been a dp grounder away from escaping had they loaded the bases.
So Yankee fans take heart, knowing the team has taken sole possession of first place in the East with rolling West rival Texas coming in for three. But although 7-4 tops Bronx April out-of-the chute marks in recent memory, it’s a start the team needs to make and sustain with the preponderance of home games in the early schedule. But not all is well in the Bronx wedge of the Big Apple, and I refer to the unacceptable pitching of Phil Hughes. The city and the baseball world is abuzz with Phil’s struggles.
And I don’t have a lot new to offer. They can take the posted pitch speeds off the board. Any fan who has witnessed Phil relieve in 2009, or start in 2010, knows that the velocity is gone. But the criticism of Phil’s reliance on his cutter notwithstanding, it was clearly his best pitch; it got him his lone two strike outs of the night. Still, there is one startling thing about Hughes’s line. What of using the zone, of working the count? For a guy who can’t seem to pound the ball like he used to, looking for a corner hear and there would not be a bad strategy. But Phil’s strike counts are those of a guy who can’t be hit, not one who dreads that a bat will hit any pitch he throws. Does 16 of 20 first-pitch strikes sound to you like a guy who’s struggling? A good strikes-to-balls ratio is 2-to-1, but Hughes’s 51/19 approaches 3-to-1. If you’re not confidant in the fastball, Phil, stop throwing almost all of them right down the middle.
But as it is, the groans start rising early in Hughes’s starts. In fact, the mood in the Stadium once the opposition start turning on Phil’s strikes brings to mind rhythm guitarist and vocalist John Farmer Bell, who celebrated his 49th birthday this April 14. The name of the band for which John plies his talents says it all about the mood in the Bronx in tonight’s fourth inning:
Widespread Panic
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!