Hughes, Tex Rally Yankees to Win

Written by: Drew Sarver on 18th July 2009

Hughes, Tex Rally Yankees to Win | read this item

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Detroit	1	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	3	10	3
NY Yankees	1	0	0	0	1	0	3	0	X	5	13	1

WP – Hughes (4-2) SV – Rivera (24) LP – Zumaya (3-3)

The comeback kids did it again last night. Trailing the Detroit Tigers 3-2 in the 7th inning, the Yankees rallied against hard throwing reliever Joel Zumaya for a 5-3 win, their 12th after trailing entering the 7th inning. Derek Jeter started the rally when he fought off an upper 90′s fastball and lined it to right field for a single. Johnny Damon followed with a double off the glove of a leaping Clete Thomas in right-center to put the tying and go ahead runs in scoring position. With rain falling steadily, Mark Teixeira turned on a Zumaya fastball and hit a moonshot that landed in the 2nd deck for what proved to be the game winning 3-run home run.

With Jeter batting in the 8th, the game was halted nearly an hour due to the heavy rain that fell during a thunderstorm. When the ball game resumed after 11 PM on the East coast, the Yankees sealed the victory with Mariano Rivera notching his 24th save of the season. Phil Hughes picked up the win in relief of A.J. Burnett with a 6 strikeout, 2 scoreless inning performance.

Burnett looked like someone who hadn’t pitched in 9 days. His fastball was all over the place- that is everywhere, but over home plate. He walked 5 batters in his 6 inning stint and struck out just one. But he kept the Yankees in the game by allowing 3 earned runs. Among them was a solo home run by Curtis Granderson that gave the Tigers a 3-1 lead in the 5th.

The Tigers normally stellar defense helped the Yankees cut the margin to a run in the bottom of the 5th with some sloppy play. Starter Luke French struck out Jeter to start the inning, but allowed back to back singles to Damon and Teixeira. Left fielder Josh Anderson allowed Teixeira’s base hit to skip through his legs, allowing Damon to score all the way from first base. Alex Rodriguez reached on a Brandon Inge throwing error, but was doubled off of 1st base when Hideki Matsui lined out to 2nd baseman Placido Polanco.

The Yankees didn’t have much luck with the lefty throwing French after scoring a run in the 1st inning. Thomas mishandled Matsui’s RBI single to right, allowing Teixeira and Matsui to each move up a base, but Jorge Posada grounded out to leave the two runners in scoring position. Posada was also gunned down at the plate by Anderson in the 6th when he tried to score from 2nd base on Melky Cabrera’s 2-out single.

Game Notes

With a growing reputation in the outfield, runners have become hesitant to test the arm of Melky Cabrera. The result has been just one outfield assist this season. But the Melkman now has 3 assists after throwing out Miguel Cabrera trying to leg out a double and doubling Gerald Laird off of 1st base on a fly ball out.

The series resumes this afternoon at 1:05 p.m. ET with a great pitching match up of Justin Verlander and CC Sabathia. David Cone will throw out the first pitch to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his perfect game. No word if Joe Girardi (or for that matter Yogi) will catch it.

Joel Zumaya threw 37 pitches last night and landed on the DL after the game with shoulder soreness.

Topics: a.j. burnett, Joel Zumaya, Luke French, Mark Teixeira, Phil Hughes, Yankees 7/17 recap. Detroit Tigers, Yankees vs. Tigers