It got ugly pretty quickly, but at least it wasn't all bad
It was another bad outing for the Yankees as Hiroki Kuroda followed up CC Sabathia's poor start on Tuesday with an even worse start of his own. The Japanese righty surrendered a total of six earned runs on 10 hits while striking out one in 3.2 innings. Thankfully, aside from Kuroda–and Kelly Johnson committing two errors at third base–the Yankees offense was eventually able to make up for it. Also, Francisco Cervelli had one heck of a day too.
Kuroda was a little erratic as only 38 of his 60 pitches were strikes. A lot of his pitches were also up in the zone, especially in the first inning when the Tigers did most of their damage. He surrendered two singles in the first to put runners at the corners when a throw from Carlos Beltran got away from Kelly Johnson to give up an early lead. A fly ball later and they were down two runs. Kuroda surrendered another two singles and then Nick Castellanos brought them in on a double to make it 0–4. Cervelli spared us another run when he made a great play diving back to tag the runner before he could score. Just look at that picture at the top of the article. Impressed yet?
In the third, Kuroda gave up a single and two consecutive doubles to score another two runs. Once again Cervelli helped out by gunning down a runner who was trying to steal third before Chase Whitley got him out of the inning.
The Yankee offense was led by Cervelli early on. He hit two solo home runs in back-to-back at-bats in the third and fifth innings. If the Yankees are looking to trade him, he looks to be doing everything he can to help them out. What a team player. I hope scouts saw that. Alfonso Soriano, Kelly Johnson, and Austin Romine were the only other players who managed to get hits before the eighth inning.
The rest of the bullpen was once again more successful (ignore Coello) than the starting pitcher they backed up. Shawn Kelley, Fred Lewis (allowed one hit), and Danny Burawa all did their job. At least we finally got a look at Yankees prospect Jose Campos, who started off at around 89-90 mph and surrendered a double, but he finished strong, collecting a strikeout on a 93 mph heater.
They finally got something started in the eighth when three consecutive base hits from Zoilo Almonte, Yangervis Solarte, and Adonis Garcia loaded the bases. John Ryan Murphy was able to get a run in on a ground ball and Jose Pirela took a walk to re-load the bases. Zelous Wheeler then hit a ground rule double just inside fair territory in left field to pull the Yankees to within one run before they got out of the inning.
In the ninth, Robert Coello came in and collected a strikeout, but he also surrendered an additional run to put the Yankees in a worse spot. The offense still came back when Jose Gil hit a double and Zoilo Almonte launched a game-tying, two-run home run to right field to tie the game at seven. In the 10th, Yoshinori Tateyama collected a strikeout and allowed a hit, but he was actually able to keep Detroit from scoring. Jose Pirela hit a bloop single in the bottom of the 10th, but nothing came of it and we ended in a tie.
The team announced that they have cut Nik Turley, Slade Heathcott, and Gary Sanchez from major league camp and have reassigned them to Triple-A (Turley, Slade) and Double-A (Sanchez). Cutting Turley and Heathcott makes sense since both were dealing with injuries that prevented them from playing, but it would have been nice to see more of Sanchez before he was inevitably sent to the minors.