Is the Sergio Mitre Era over yet?

Get well soon, Andy.

Filling in for the injured Andy Pettitte, Sergio Mitre was horrendous, digging the Yankees an early hole from the get-go en route to a 7-4 loss. Though the team made a few valiant attempts to dig themselves out, it’s pretty hard to win when your starter gives up seven runs, even if only five of them were earned. Dustin Moseley deserves props for his relief work, pitching 4 2/3 scoreless innings for the remainder of the game.

Royals starter Kyle Davies wasn’t great (5 1/3 IP, 4ER), but was effective enough on the afternoon. The offensive fireworks were provided by Mark Teixeira, who recorded his third multi-home run game of the year, giving him 20 on the season. Tex actually came up as the potential tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth against Joakim Soria, and was called out on a very close play at first that looked like it could’ve gone either way.

Had Tex been called safe, Alex Rodriguez would’ve come to the plate with the bases loaded with a chance to win the game with a grand slam that would have also been his 600th career home run, not to mention moving him one behind all-time leader Lou Gehrig in career grand slams. So yeah, it was a rather frustrating call by the ump, but that’s baseball.

The Yanks look to take the series tomorrow afternoon with Phil Hughes on the bump. Hughes only has two quality starts in his last six outings, and with Pettitte out the Yankees really need Hughes to regain some of that dominant early-season form. In a bizarre twist of fate, they’ll be facing Sean O’Sullivan for the second time in the last six days. O’Sullivan was apparently traded from the Angels two days after holding the Yankees to two runs over six innings on Tuesday. The “we haven’t seen him before” excuse holds absolutely no water this time around.

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