Tigers take three of four from Yanks

Opponent: Detroit Tigers
Location: Tiger Stadium, Detroit, MI.
Yankees Overall Record: 22-12
Series MVP: who else? Phil Hughes
Series LVP: Derek Jeter
Quote of the Series: comes from first baseman Mark Teixeira on the recent losing streak.

"Three and four road trips are going to happen,” Teixeira said. “As long as we keep playing the way that we’re capable of playing and don’t go crazy and pitchers starting walking guys and hitters start swinging at first pitches, popping everything up. We just keep doing our thing, we’re going to win games again.”

The Yankees continued their short road trip with a four game series against the Detroit Tigers.  The Yankees played like the weather that hindered over Detroit for the week, ugly.  The offense went MIA as did much of the pitching.

Monday's game, a 5-4 loss was all about Detroit.  The Yankees managed to crawl their way back to make the game close but were unsuccessful.  Former Yankees Phil Coke and Johnny Damon really hurt their old club.  Coke pitched a decisive eight inning, allowing nobody to score with the bases loaded.  Damon hit his second home run of the season which extended the lead for his new club.  Magglio Ordonez made the game saving catch though in the eighth.  He took what would have been a double down the line from Jeter to end the inning.

Tuesday's game was postponed due to wicked rain that was in the Detroit area meaning the two teams had to play a double header Wednesday.  Javier Vazquez started game one and even though he took the loss, he pitched much better then he had in the past.  Vazquez was even pitching on about one week's rest after having his turn skipped in the rotation during the Boston series.  He pitched into the seventh inning and only gave up two runs.  Unfortunately for him, the offense did not show up to the game, but saved everything else for Phil Hughes in the nightcap.

Hughes, once again was outstanding.  He pitched seven outstanding innings, allowed just five hits, no runs and had eight strikeouts.  Six of his strikeouts came with the bases loaded in the first and third innings respectively.  He lowered his ERA to 1.38 and became the first starter to win his first five decisions.  The decision to put Hughes in the rotation as the fifth starter, well now fourth, has really paid off for the team.   The offense showed up to this game also.  They exploded for eight runs, six of which were scored in the ninth inning.  Mariano Rivera also got into his first game this month and was perfect and struck out one.

Thursday's game was back to the anemic offense that haunted the Yanks this whole series. They were also hurt by an unusually wild CC Sabathia who allowed his highest amount of runs all season.  He pitched six innings, gave up nine hits and allowed six runs.  After the game Sabathia said his mechanics were off on his fastball and that's why he was getting hurt.  The offense also had to deal with the fastball throwing machine of Justin Verlander.  Verlander allowed just four hits for the entire game while pitching into the seventh inning.  The final score of the game was 6-0.

The Yankees could not get out of Detroit fast enough following this series.

Next Up: The Yankees return home and take on the Minnesota Twins.