Yankee Baseball On Your TV

The winter is officially over, well not technically, but the Yankees are at The Boss in Tampa playing the Tampa Bay Rays this afternoon at 1:15 and you can catch it all on the YES Network.

I’m not sure if I could be more excited. Phil Hughes starts today and he’ll probably go two innings. After that Phil Coke, Brian Bruney, Damaso Marte, Jonathan Albaladejo, and Mark Melancon will make an appearance.

The starting lineup is as follows, via Peter Abraham’s blog:

Damon LF Jeter SS Teixeira 1B Rodriguez 3B Cano 2B Nady RF Posada DH Molina C Cabrera CF

This will be our first chance at seeing Mark Teixeira hit with a Yankees uniform on and hopefully we’ll get to see some of their young prospects as well.

Austin Jackson and Jesus Montero both got into yesterday’s game, so there is a chance both will get the day off today. Hopefully we’ll at least get a chance to see Austin Romineplay. Melancon is pitching, that should be pretty good.

Check Abraham’s blog for the Ray’s pitchers and lineup. Frankly, I don’t really care about them today. Aside from Carl Crawford and Morgan Ensberg I don’t really recognize their players they’re running out there today.

Be sure to keep checking back here today as I will be updating the blog with highlights from the game.

Update 1:27: Hughes worked a somewhat rustry first inning. He hit the first and third batters with a strike out in between. A fly to right and a pop to short got him out of the inning. I saw him go as high as 92 MPH. Michael Kay noted that he was not using his new cutter and instead only worked with his fastball/changeup/curveball combo.

Update 1:32:

The Yankees went down pretty quickly in the bottom of the first. Teixeira got his first at bat in pinstripes behind him. It was a five pitch strike out, the last pitch up, up, and away.

Update 1:41: Hughes had decent inning. He struck out another batter, on an 89 MPH fastball. He was sitting all inning from as low as 87 to as high as 91. It’s the first game of spring, but hopefully he picks that up a bit. Arod is up now, I heard a couple of boos, but mostly cheers.

Update 2:01:  Jorge Posada blasted a homer to deep right field. Let’s hope that’s the first of many this season. His bat was really missed last year. On that note, head over to Fowl Balls to see my prediction of who the most important Yankee this season will be.

Update 2:03: Michael Kay has started already with his BS as he has spent the better part of this inning talking about some kid eating his ice cream in the stands. They should fire this guy already.

Update 2:30: Jorge just missed his second homer of the day. Instead he drove in Xavier Nady, who also doubled, scored on a ground-rule double.

Update 2:47: Michael Kay updates us on that kid, he has no more ice cream. How does this guy have a job? JB Cox is on the mound. He looks a bit wild, well it’s early.

Update 3:38: Game is over Yankees won 5-1, pitchers looked good Cox was the only one who gave up a run. Melancon looked good, struck out a batter on a nicely painted curveball.

Shelley Duncan also homered to left. Francisco Cervelli’s arm looked pretty poor, I’m going to keep an eye on that the rest of spring.