Last night was not an exception. At first, it was, as Jordan Montgomery breezed through the 1st 4 innings, before allowing a home run to former Yankee Brian McCann. He allowed another run in the 7th, and Aaron Boone had seen enough.
But David Robertson allowed another, and what had been a 5-0 Yankee lead -- the same lead they'd blown on Sunday, at home to Baltimore -- was now 6-3. Robertson got out of it, but Dellin Betances allowed 3 more runs in the 8th.
Fortunately, that did not tie the score at 6-6, because the Yankee bats got the job done. In the 2nd inning, Gary Sanchez hit a double, and then Aaron Hicks, in just his 2nd game back from the Disabled List, hit a ball that caromed off the right-center-field wall and rolled away, for an inside-the-park home run. 2-0 Yankees.
The Yankees scored 3 more runs in the 5th, on a leadoff double by Miguel Andujar, a Brett Gardner double, an Aaron Judge single, and an error that got Didi Gregorius on and scored Judge. Mixed in there was, as you may have guessed, a Giancarlo Stanton strikeout.
That made it 5-0 Yankees, and Hicks led off the 6th with a home run, to make it 6-1. He became the 1st Yankee in 62 years to have an inside- and an outside-the-park home run in the same game. That was done on May 30, 1956, by, Hank Bauer, not the swiftest of men, but the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium did have that Death Valley in left and center field. This was also one of the games in which Mickey Mantle hit the right field facade with a home run. Comedian Billy Crystal has said that this was the 1st game he ever went to, and he's shown the program on TV to prove it.
Maybe Hicks' performance was less like Bauer's than it was like Mantle's. I can imagine the headline: "HICKS FLICKS STICK LIKE MICK."
These 6 runs were scored of Tiger start Mike Fiers. At this point, Tiger manager Ron Gardenhire (former Mets infielder and coach, and former Minnesota Twins manager) must have wished he could now sing, "We Didn't Start Mike Fiers." (Sorry, Billy Joel.)
Andujar led off the 7th with a triple, and has shown that maybe, just maybe, he's the 1st of Brian Cashman's precious "prospects" to get the job done. Ronald Torreyes singled him home to make it 7-3. Gardner was hit by a pitch, Judge walked to load the bases, and then Stanton grounded back to the pitcher, who threw home for a force play. But Gregorius hit a sacrifice fly, and that made it 8-3 -- 8-6 after Robertson and Bentances pitched poorly.
Aroldis Chapman came on in the 9th, and struck out the side to end it, fanning the future Hall-of-Famer, Miguel Cabrera, for the final out. Yankees 8, Tigers 6. WP: Montgomery (1-0). SV: Chapman (2). LP: Fiers (1-1). The Yankees get back to .500, at 7-7, but remain 4 1/2 games behind the Boston Red Sox.
The series continues this afternoon. Luis Cessa starts against Francisco Liriano, who had previously pitched for Gardenhire in Minnesota.