Bronx, N.Y., May 4, 2013 — Some expressed concern, given the meager results against a good, but not great pitcher, in the 2-0 loss to A.J. Griffin and the Oakland A’s Friday night, that this Yankee team just doesn’t have the offense to compete in 2013. After all, had you been able to see three hours into the future once A’s shortstop Adam Rosales lifted CC Sabathia’s first-pitch 90-mph fastball over the wall in left, the game was over one pitch in.

Wrong lesson. With a rotation loaded with quality start bullets day after day, what the pinstripers are doing through a month of quality play is to win more often than not, and to do it the way it is done in the playoffs. Confronted with his team coming off a loss and his bullpen emptied of name guys via injury, Phil Hughes not only came through with a dominating performance; he took the ball for eight strong innings, coming out for his final frame having already thrown 106 times.

Eerily, the game got off to a Friday-like start, with John Jaso lashing a ball with home run distance to right on Phil’s third throw, but Ichiro Suzuki glided back to the wall and snatched the orb before it cleared. Phil closed out the frame a popout and single later by striking out Brandon Moss on his signature heat, but if the A’s thought he was setting a pattern with that, they had another thing coming.

Mixing in curves and changes, Phil rode his hard stuff, but he came out a more complete pitcher Saturday than he’s shown in a long time, perhaps ever. He whiffed nine through seven innings, eight of them swinging, many beaten by the fastball, but not all. Jed Lowrie flailed weakly at a slider, the pitch Phil has labored long to master, in the third, as did Seth Smith in the fourth. Eighteen of the 24 outs were evenly divided between players missing pitches or hitting them in the air, but Eric Sogard’s third-inning liner to Ichiro and Smith’s deep shot to center leading off the seventh pesented the only challenges. The ground ball? Sure, he got one, until the eighth, a dp grounder seed he fed Josh Donaldson following Smith’s leadoff single in the fourth.

That was just after the Yanks had taken the lead, on a home run deep to left by the surprising catcher Chris Stewart in the home third. Although Phil was clearly determined it was a lead he would hold, the Yankee “O” pushed the issue. Lyle Overbay doubled the margin with a leadoff blast in the fifth, and Robinson Cano and Eduardo Nunez would score after doubling and tripling, respectively, in the sixth and seventh.

Which was more than enough for Hughes and the pen. Once the A’s scratched two runs against Shawn Kelley and Mariano Rivera in the ninth, the 4-2 final matched the score by which the team beat the Angels back on May 4, 1981, when reliever Ron Davis preserved the win by striking out the last eight batters to the plate. There have been other big May 4 games; this is unfortunately the day the White Sox blanked the Yankees twice by a 15-0 score, both in 1907 and then in 1950, the worst Yankee shutout losses ever until Cleveland pounded them in the old Stadium almost 10 years ago, 22-0.

Every Hughes number was more than solid: the 82/36 strikes/balls ratio, the 21 of 29 first-pitch strikes, the 19 swings and misses he coaxed from Oakland bats. He did walk two, but whiffed nine, and only allowed two baserunners once in an inning. It was such an impressive outing, I was tempted to call this The Young Man and the Pea in honor of this being the 60th anniversary of the day the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Ernest Hemingway for his masterful short novel, The Old Man and the Sea, a book that mentions Joe DiMaggio and the Yankees.

But the scoreboard reported before the game that to this point in his career Phil had an 18-9 record in games following Yankee losses. Make that 19-9, and make the Yankee rotation one through four as solid as any team in the bigs, something that makes me feel,

entHUGHESed!

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!