The Yankees entered this game with one goal, and that was to earn a split of the series against the Tigers after losing the first two games of the series. It was not easy, and the Yankees played with fire on several occasions but in the end they leave Detroit with a victory. The one-run win today was the Yankees first of the sort since mid-July against the Angels. They were 0-8 in one run games since then but leave Detroit with a win streak.
The Yankees were not able to muster much off of Tigers starter Doug Fister, but they got two second inning runs thanks to an RBI triple by Ibanez followed by an RBI single by Ichiro. They would not do anymore scoring until the eighth inning when Teixeira and Chavez went back-to-back to give the Yankees the lead after Kuroda gave up three runs in 6.1 innings. The game got interesting in the fifth inning when a ball landed on the line in left field and the umpire called it foul then changed his call to a fair ball, which enabled the Tigers to score the go-ahead run at the time. Girardi was fuming over the call, stated several times to the umpire that he would protest the game, then finally was ejected after being given a lot of lee-way in his argument. After Girardi's ejection, the Yankees were able to come back in the eighth inning off of set-up man Benoit with two straight home runs. The Yankee offense didn't do much today in terms of runs, but they were able to win the game with the runs that were scored.
Kuroda pitched a great game despite giving up three runs to the Tigers. Avila took him deep with a runner on then the third run was scored in the crazy fifth inning when Girardi was thrown out. A bold move by the Yankees was sending out David Phelps in the eighth inning with the meat of the Tigers order coming up. He got two of the three big boppers out then turned it over to Rafael Soriano for the four-out save attempt. Soriano escaped the eighth inning stranding a runner at second. In the bottom of the ninth with a one run lead, he gave up back-to-back hits to Avila and Infante. First and third with no men out ended with a pop up to center field which was caught by Curtis Granderson and the Yankees were able to breathe. I almost popped a vein in my head in that ninth inning because I thought for sure that the tying run would score from third base with nobody out. Soriano did a great job getting out of the inning and the Yankees won.
The Yankees continue their road trip by going to Toronto tomorrow for three against the Blue Jays. Three lefties will face the Yankees as tomorrow night, Freddy Garcia gets the start for the bombers. Chavez's hot bat will have to sit on the bench for the series because of the lefties but if Girardi is feeling bold this weekend, he could run Eric Chavez out for a game or two.
No comments:
Post a Comment