The LoHud Yankees Blog

When Ivan Nova finally stumbled, the Yankees offense was there to pick him up. Nova flirted with danger throughout his 4.1 innings this afternoon, and when that thin ice finally cracked in a three-run fourth inning, the Yankees offense picked up the slack in a 9-4 win at Fenway. The Yankees scored seven runs and hit four homers — two by Russell Martin — in a four-inning span from the fourth through the seventh. Dave Robertson, Joba Chamberlain and Luis Ayala kept the Red Sox scoreless in the late innings.

Associated Press photo of Curtis Granderson, who homered

YANKEES (4-3)
Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Curtis Granderson CF
Eric Chavez DH
Russell Martin C

RHP Ivan Nova (1-0, 4.50)
Nova vs. Red Sox

RED SOX (1-6)
Carl Crawford LF
Dustin Pedroia 2B
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Kevin Youkilis 3B
David Ortiz DH
J.D. Drew RF
Jed Lowrie SS
Jarrod Saltalamacchia C
Jacoby Ellsbury CF

RHP Clay Buchholz (0-1, 5.68)
Buchholz vs. Yankees

TIME/TV: 1:10 p.m., FOX

WEATHER: It’s really a beautiful day here at Fenway. Still a little chilly, but nothing too crazy, with just a little bit of wind blowing from left to right. Much nicer than yesterday.

UMPIRES: HP Chris Guccione, 1B Mike Winters, 2B Mike Everitt, 3B Mark Wegner

GOOD SIGN FOR CANO: It was noted yesterday that Robinson Cano’s .362 career batting average at Fenway Park is the highest for any Yankee in history in this stadium. Today he’s facing Clay Buchholz, and Cano is a career .467 hitter against the Red Sox starter.

PAST THE KID: Alex Rodriguez needs on RBI to pass Ken Griffey Jr. for sole possession of 13th place on baseball’s all-time RBI list. He’s three RBI away from tying Al Simmons and Ted Williams for 11th place.

SUPER NOVA: Ivan Nova is making his second start of the season. On Monday he became the first Yankees rookie to win a start within the season’s first four games since Al Leiter — then 22 – beat the Brewers in the fourth game of the 1998 season. That’s according to Elias.

BIRTHDAY BOY: Dave Robertson turns 26 years old today. Mark Teixeira turns 31 on Monday.

UPDATE, 1:43 p.m.: In his first start with the Yankees, Eric Chavez just doubled on the first pitch he saw for an RBI double. That’s his first Yankee hit and makes it a 2-0 lead in the second inning. Nick Swisher previously drove in a run on a grounder to the right side.

UPDATE, 2:17 p.m.: Nova danced out of trouble in the first and second innings, but now he has a runner at third with one out and the 4 and 5 hitters coming to the plate in the third. It’s still a 2-0 Yankees lead.

UPDATE, 2:19 p.m.: One run scored on a Kevin Youkilis grounder to short, but Nova did a fine job limiting the damage. He got out of the third with a 2-1 lead.

UPDATE, 2:32 p.m.: After Chavez hit his second double of the game, Martin followed with his second home run of the season, a three-run shot to put the Yankees in front 5-1.

UPDATE, 2:42 p.m.: The Yankees have chased Buchholz in the top of the fourth. After the Martin home run, Jeter and Rodriguez each singled to force Buchholz out of the game with two outs and runners at first and second. It’s still a 5-1 Yankees lead.

UPDATE, 2:57 p.m.: Hard to tell from up here why Robinson Cano didn’t at least try to turn two. Nova got the ground ball he needed to get out of the fourth, but for whatever reason Cano decided he couldn’t get the second out — maybe he didn’t have a good grip on the ball? – and so a run scored on a 6-4 fielder’s choice instead of the fourth inning ending on a 6-4-3 double play.

UPDATE, 3:03 p.m.: Not turning two cost the Yankees three runs as Dustin Pedroia followed with a two-run double, pulling the Red Sox within 5-4.

UPDATE, 3:10 p.m.: Two-run home run by Granderson lets the Yankees breathe a little easier here in the fifth. It’s a 7-4 game. And of course, Chavez followed with his third hit of the game.

UPDATE, 3:28 p.m.: Here comes Dave Robertson, replacing Nova with one out and runners at first and second in the bottom of the fifth. It’s still 7-4 Yankees.

UPDATE, 3:38 p.m.: Robertson gets out of the inning, meanwhile, just confirmed that the Yankees have in fact signed Carlos Silva to a minor league deal. Jon Heyman was the first I saw with the news.

UPDATE, 4:02 p.m.: Martin has his first multi-homer game since 2007. Meanwhile, the Yankees have announced the Silva signing and say he will report to the minor league complex in Tampa on Wednesday.

No surprise, Phil Hughes remained a hot topic of discussion during today’s pregame press conference. There’s really nothing new — the Yankees still believe it’s a matter of arm strength — but Joe Girardi did bring up one aspect that Hughes himself mentioned in passing yesterday.

Last season, Hughes didn’t make his first Major League start until April 15. He stayed behind in Tampa to continue pitching in exhibition games after the Yankees broke camp, and in the last outing or two before he finally came north, Hughes’ velocity was lower than usual. The return to form might have been a matter of Major League adrenalin. It might have been a matter of recovering from a sort of dead-arm period. It might have been a matter of gaining the proper arm strength.

“This is a kid that made his first start last year April 15 and his velocity creeped up a couple miles from what it did in spring training,” Girardi said. “I know his velocity has not been there this year. Does it have to do with the increased work last year? Does it have to do with it’s just taking him a little time to get going? I can’t tell you. There’s nothing to lead us to believe that something is bothering him because he hasn’t said anything.”

Girardi said the Yankees still have no plans of sending Hughes to a doctor because right now — aside from the velocity — there’s no sign of trouble, either medical or mechanical.

“There are guys that really get into their legs (when they pitch),” Girardi said. “There are other guys who don’t, who just have that natural gift of being able to throw a ball hard. For Hughesy, he’s somewhere in between that, and I’m not going to panic about his velocity. I’m not. I believe it’s coming back. I can’t give you a date. I’d like to be able to say it will be back this day, but I believe it’s going to be there. Right now he’s scuffling a little bit, and I don’t want to throw away what this kid did last year and all of a sudden say I’m really concerned. Yeah, I want to get him on track and he’s important to us, but I believe it’s coming back.”

• Girardi said today’s lineup is nothing more than an opportunity to get Eric Chavez into a game. He’s had only one at-bats this year.

• That said, Jorge Posada is off to a strange start. He has three home runs, but he has only one other hit. Some of that is because of the adjustment to DH, Girardi said, but most of it is simply the ebb and flow of being a hitter. “When he hit those couple of home runs we thought he had it,” Girardi said. “It’s just part of the game. In our game there are so many ups and downs, to me the big thing is that mentally you stay on the same plane all the time and you don’t get caught up in it.”

• Russell Martin has played in every game this season, but as Girardi pointed out, he has yet to play more than four games in a row. He was supposed to have a day off on Wednesday, but that game was rained out. “The schedule has played favorably for him to play every day,” Girardi said.

• Girardi said he considered putting Chavez in the field, but right now he’s confident that Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira feel fine. “I think physically, they’re good and their bodies are recovering fine right now,” Girardi said. “Maybe if it’s a little later in the season, I might change my mind.”

• Girardi said it’s possible Bartolo Colon could be available tomorrow, but it’s more likely he won’t pitch again until after Monday’s off day. Freddy Garcia is available as a long man today.

• Kind of like what he said about Hughes, Girardi said he doesn’t want to “throw away” what Boone Logan did last season. The Yankees have seen Logan be effective as the No. 1 lefty, and right now they have little choice but to trust that he’ll get going again. “Boone is our left-hander out of the bullpen that’s going to need to get left-handers out,” Girardi said.

• Speaking of lefties, Pedro Feliciano will see the doctor when the Yankees return to New York. If that checkup goes well, he could be cleared to begin throwing. Feliciano has indicated that he does not believe it will take him very long to get ready.

• Francisco Cervelli has been taking batting practice, running in a pool and doing light agility drills in Tampa. Girardi still believes he could have his regular backup catcher by early May.

• I thought Girardi did a nice job addressing the Manny Ramirez retirement: “Any time that this comes up, it’s kind of a black eye for baseball in a sense,” he said. “It’s sad. We keep trying to put this behind us, this era that they talk about, and it just keeps resurfacing. We have trials coming up, we have what happened with Manny, and it saddens me. You want the game to be clean and gone about the right way. We went through a time period that it didn’t happen.”

Associated Press photos of Hughes and Posada.

Also, Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues is a Bob Dylan song. For whatever reason I thought of it when I was writing that headline.

Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Curtis Granderson CF
Eric Chavez DH
Russell Martin C

RHP Ivan Nova

For those concerned about the Yankees not having a long man this afternoon, Freddy Garcia is listed as an available reliever.

RED SOX
Carl Crawford LF
Dustin Pedroia 2B
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Kevin Youkilis 3B
David Ortiz DH
JD Drew RF
Jed Lowrie SS
Jarrod Saltalamacchia C
Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Ivan Nova has pitched at Fenway Park before. It was late last season — the second game of a double header on the next-to-last day — and Nova came out of the bullpen to handle the late innings.

He wasn’t especially good. A blown save, a loss, three walks and four hits all in 2.1 innings.

“Last year a little bit (nervous), but not too much,” he said. “This year I’m not nervous at all. I’m on the team right now, in the rotation. That’s something special for me. I just have to be focused and show what I’ve got.”

This afternoon the Yankees will turn to their 24-year-old rookie to even this series. Nova wasn’t perfect in his first start of the year, but he showed the Yankees something in his six innings against the Twins on Monday.

Nova gave the Yankees a pretty good start that day, in a game that very nearly became a bad start several times. He showed the Yankees that he can pitch under pressure and keep things from unraveling all around him.

“I would think the games that he pitched (last year) — he pitched in Tampa and he pitched a lot of important games for us — that would really help him out,” Joe Girardi said. “What he did just he other day at home against a very good Minnesota Twins team, I would think that would help him as well and help in his growth.”

Associated Press photo

Just like everyone else, Phil Hughes is searching for answers. He’s well aware of the results, and he’s well aware that his fastball doesn’t have the life he’s come to expect. That said, Hughes said he feels fine, perfectly healthy. Pitching coach Larry Rothschild said he doesn’t see any sort of mechanical issue, and if it were mechanical, he believes Hughes would see significant velocity peaks and valleys.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s tiredness,” Rothschild said. “The arm strength hasn’t been there all spring. There’s a history of it from the past, but you’d like to see it at some point pretty soon.”

Truth is, there might not be an answer. Rothschild said the Yankees tried to lighten Hughes’ workload this spring, but it had no impact. Hughes said it was hard to trust spring results, because he saw a velocity spike when he finally joined the big league rotation last year. Right now, it seems everyone’s best bet is that the velocity will come back as a matter of course.

“I don’t think this is something you’re going to see all year,” Rothschild said. “At least I would hope not. I don’t know if he’s lost it or just hasn’t built up all the way yet. Some guys are slower like that, and he’s clearly right now one of them.”

Joe Girardi said he wouldn’t rule out the idea of skipping a start in hopes that extra rest will make a difference, but right now there are no plans to do so.

“It’s possible he could get an extra day here, or there’s some different things we could do, but right now, no,” Giradi said. “I want to get him back out there, get him right, and get him going… If you want to last a long time, you have to figure out how to mentally grind through things, and how to get through situations, and I saw him do it a number of times last year. I saw this kid take big steps last year, and I’m not willing to say those steps are gone just because of two starts. There’s going to be starts where you struggle. You might have a bad couple starts, you might have a bad month. And you’ve got to find a way to fight through it.”

As usual in his small Fenway office, it was pretty much impossible to hear Girardi postgame, so here’s Rothschild speaking after tonight’s game.

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• Bartolo Colon said he actually felt better as the game progressed. It’s hard to overstate just how good he was. “Bartolo was just really locating his fastball well, to both sides of the plate,” catcher Russell Martin said. “His first two, three innings, I think we threw one off-speed pitch. He’s just got a really nasty comeback two-seamer that he can throw in on lefties, and they really don’t know what to do with it. If they hit it, it’s going to be foul. When he locates it, it’s going to be tough to hit.”

• A shining example of how unreliable the win and loss stats are, especially given a one-game sample size: Colon took the loss this afternoon and John Lackey got the win. Their lines:

Colon: 4.1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
Lackey: 5 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 2 K

• Phil Hughes isn’t the only Yankees pitcher struggling. Boone Logan is the only left-hander in the pen, and today he allowed a pivotal double and two-run single to David Ortiz and J.D. Drew. “It’s not fun going out there and not doing your job, giving up hits to lefties, walking lefties,” Logan said. “My job is to get them all out, and I’m not doing any of that right now.”

• Logan has pitched in three games. He’s been charged with a run in all of them — one was unearned — and he’s allowed five hits while getting just four outs. The problem starts with his slider. “I need to locate my four-seam also, but my slider is my pitch everything else comes off of,” Logan said. “… I just gotta quit aiming the ball and just let it go. Quit thinking about it.”

• Just to close the book on Yankees pitchers today: Dave Robertson looked pretty good in a scoreless eighth. He allowed one hit, a single. He threw 13 pitches, nine for strikes.

• Alex Rodriguez’s third home run of the season was his 50th career home run against the Red Sox. No active player has more home runs against Boston. Rodriguez has more career home runs against the Angels (67), Orioles (54) and Blue Jays (52).

• Speaking of Rodriguez, today’s home run gave him 1,836 career RBI, tying him with Ken Griffey Jr. — and move him past Rafael Palmeira — for 13th on baseball’s all-time RBI list.

• Speaking of success against Boston: Robinson Cano went 2-for-4 with two doubles, raising his career batting average at Fenway to .362, fifth highest all-time among visiting players. That’s also the highest career average for any player in a Yankees uniform at Fenway with a minimum of 200 at-bats. That’s according to Elias and passed along by the Red Sox.

• On the flip side: Hughes has an 8.47 career ERA at Fenway, his worst of any Major League park.

• Nick Swisher’s run-scoring groundout in the third inning gave him 500 RBI for his career. He’s driven in a run in five of the Yankees seven games this season.

• If it wasn’t Colon, the Yankees star of the day was certainly Brett Gardner, who had a double, a triple, two walks, an RBI, a stolen base and made some fine plays in the outfield.

• I didn’t get over there to talk to him — I was focused on the pitchers — but Mark Teixeira was one of a handful of position players who stuck around long after the game to talk to the media. Hard to blame guys for wanting to leave quickly today (as you’ll see in the last note) but Teixeira stuck around to talk after his fifth-inning error. I thought I’d mention that since accountability became an issue earlier this week.

• Looking for a little insult to injury? The water was messed up in the visiting clubhouse at Fenway, so the Yankees couldn’t shower after the game. They had to dress in their regular clothes, leave the park and — I hope — shower at the hotel.

Associated Press photos

Phil Hughes had thrown only a few first-inning pitches. He’d seen nothing but hitter reactions — no radar readings, no velocities on the scoreboard — and he already knew that his fastball was just as lifeless as in his previous start.

“It was within the first couple of at-bats,” he said. “I threw a couple of what I thought were good fastballs and they just didn’t have that same effectiveness. I didn’t see the gun at that point. I knew it. I didn’t really need to see readings. I can tell usually within a few pitches if it’s there or not.”

It wasn’t there, and it hasn’t been there through two regular-season starts.

Hughes said it was impossible to know anything based on spring training. Spring is always an unpredictable time, and without regular-season adrenaline, there was no way to be certain what kind of fastball he was bringing into the regular season. The fact his velocity was down this spring wasn’t especially alarming. The fact it was down today — and in his previous start — has Hughes more flustered than worried.

“It’s tough,” he said. “These last four days sitting around on that last bad outing, and now another four days I’m going to have to sit around on this one. It’s a difficult feeling. I don’t feel like I’m bringing anything to the team right now, and that’s a tough thing to deal with. We’re playing great, we’re scoring a lot of runs, and we just can’t afford to give away games like this. It’s difficult because I know I can do a lot better. When I’m going out there without my best stuff, it’s frustrating.”

Right now Hughes has no answers. He and pitching coach Larry Rothschild believe it’s an arm strength issue, not a medical or mechanical issue.

“For whatever reason it’s coming along slowly,” Hughes said. “It’s kind of a helpless feeling.”

Here’s Hughes postgame.

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Associated Press photo

For the Yankees, today’s 9-6 loss against the Red Sox extended beyond starting pitcher Phil Hughes. Mark Teixeira’s fifth-inning error proved costly, Boone Logan couldn’t handle the lefties he was brought in to face, and the Yankees offense went silent in the late innings. In a technical sense, that’s why a 6-6 tie turned into a Red Sox win, but the Yankees bigger problem was Hughes. Their No. 3 starter pitched only two innings and allowed six runs, a second straight sloppy outing for a starter who was supposed to be one of the few reliable pieces of the Yankees rotation.

Associated Press photo

I was about to start a new game post anyway — because we’re approaching 1,000 comments — but this news is also worth a new post. Major League Baseball just announced that Manny Ramirez is retiring, and it sent this one paragraph press release as the only explanation.

“Major League Baseball recently notified Manny Ramirez of an issue under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Rather than continue with the process under the Program, Ramirez has informed MLB that he is retiring as an active player. If Ramirez seeks reinstatement in the future, the process under the Drug Program will be completed. MLB will not have any further comment on this matter.”

UPDATE, 4:29 p.m.: Heading into the bottom of the seventh with the Red Sox still leading 7-6. The Teixeira error looms large right now. Colon, by the way, has been tremendous.

UPDATE, 4:42 p.m.: Brought in to handle lefties, Boone Logan allowed a double to David Ortiz and a two-run single to J.D. Drew. It’s now 9-6 Red Sox in the bottom of the seventh.

YANKEES (4-2)
Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Russell Martin C

RHP Phil Hughes (0-1, 11.25)
Hughes vs. Red Sox

RED SOX (0-6)
Carl Crawford LF
Dustin Pedroia 2B
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Kevin Youkilis 3B
David Ortiz DH
J.D. Drew RF
Jarrod Saltalamacchia C
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Marco Scutaro SS

RHP John Lackey (0-1, 22.09)
Lackey vs. Yankees

TIME/TV: 2:05 p.m., YES Network

WEATHER: It’s cold, but it’s not extremely cold. Could be much, much worse. Looks like the win is blowing across the stadium from right to left.

UMPIRES: HP Mark Wegner, 1B Chris Guccione, 2B Mike Winters, 3B Mike Everitt

NOT HOME SWEET HOME: The past five times the Yankees have played in an opponent’s home opener, the Yankees have gone 1-4, including a loss last year at Fenway.

JOIN THE CLUB: The only Yankees regulars who did not hit a home run during the opening home stand were Brett Gardner, Derek Jeter and Nick Swisher. Both Jeter and Swisher have homered off Lackey in their careers. Jeter is a career .315/.413/.481 against today’s Red Sox starter.

PERFECTLY NOT PERFECT: The Yankees are 4-0 when making an error this season. They’re 0-2 when not making an error.

ONE DAY AWAY: Dave Robertson turns 26 years old tomorrow.

UPDATE, 2:21 p.m.: Internet access is a mess here. More importantly, the Boston fans are already booing the Red Sox after Robinson Cano’s two-out double gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead in the first inning.

UPDATE, 2:28 p.m.: Pedroia’s solo shot has pulled the Red Sox within 2-1 after one inning. I saw Hughes’ fastball between 89-92 mph.

UPDATE, 2:38 p.m.: RBI double by Brett Gardner has pushed the Yankees lead to 3-1. Nice day for him so far.

UPDATE, 2:53 p.m.: With Hughes falling apart, Bartolo Colon is already up in the Yankees bullpen in the bottom of the second. Hughes has allowed four runs this inning, and there are still two on with two outs.

UPDATE, 2:55 p.m.: Hughes finally got out of the inning after Youkilis got himself stuck in a run down, but the final out didn’t come until after a fifth run had scored. It’s now 6-3 Red Sox after two.

UPDATE, 3:06 p.m.: Here’s comes Bartolo. Hughes is finished after two rocky innings. It’s 6-4 Red Sox after Nick Swisher’s RBI groundout in the top of the third.

UPDATE, 3:22 p.m.: The Yankees keeping chipping away. After a Gardner triple, Jeter singled to center to pull the Yankees within 6-5 in the fourth. Also, Aceves is getting loose in the Red Sox bullpen. Is there a chance the first Yankees-Red Sox game of the season is going to come down to Alfredo Aceves and Bartolo Colon?

UPDATE, 3:35 p.m.: And the game’s all even. Alex Rodriguez just smoked a home run over the monster to tie the score at 6.

UPDATE, 3:51 p.m.: Mark Teixeira’s error in the fifth was costly, opening the door to an unearned run and a 7-6 Red Sox lead.