NEW YORK – Miguel Cabrera homered and drove in three runs and Drew Smyly pitched into the seventh inning for his first major league win to help the Detroit Tigers snap a five-game losing streak by beating the New York Yankees 7-5 Saturday.
Andy Dirks hit a three-run homer in the first off Freddy Garcia. Playing Delmon Young's usual position of left field, Dirks made a pair of nice defensive plays, too, running down balls that looked like extra-base hits off the bat.
Young was placed on the restricted list earlier Saturday to be evaluated under baseball's employee assistance program. He was arrested early Friday on a hate crime harassment charge following an encounter at his hotel during which police say he yelled anti-Semitic epithets and appeared intoxicated.
Smyly (1-0) gave up a leadoff single to Alex Rodriguez in the seventh and manager Jim Leyland pulled him immediately for lefty Phil Coke rather than have him face the rest of the Yankees lineup a third time. Coke got Mark Teixeira to hit into a 1-6-3 double play. Smyly finished with two hits and two walks in six-plus innings. He struck out seven.
With two outs in the first inning and Austin Jackson on second, Yankees manager Joe Girardi ordered Prince Fielder intentionally walked. Dirks responded with his first homer of the season, a drive to right field on an 0-2 pitch.
The Tigers added three runs in the second on a double by Brennan Boesch and Cabrera's easy, two-run single to right field for a 6-1 lead. Cabrera answered Curtis Granderson's solo homer in the seventh with one of his own in the eighth.
Granderson had a bloop single to score a run off Jose Valverde in the ninth and scored on pinch-hitter Raul Ibanez's double. Pinch-hitter Eric Chavez hit a deep fly to right to end it.
Nick Swisher hit solo homers in the first and ninth innings, one from each side of the plate.
Garcia (0-2) looked shaky right from the start. He started the game by walking Jackson, a player with barely more than 100 bases on balls in more than 1,300 plate appearances for his career. He actually went to a full count on his first three batters, and intentionally walked Fielder before Dirks' home run.
Garcia gave up a leadoff single in the second before two flyball outs, but left before the game was an hour old. He was charged with six runs and gave up five hits in 1 2-3 innings, allowing seven of the 12 batters he faced to reach. He walked off to boos, with an ERA of 12.51 and his place in the Yankees' rotation in jeopardy.
The Yankees' starting pitching began the day 29th in the majors with an ERA of 5.95, and Garcia's fiasco boosted it to 6.37, worse than everyone but the Twins at 7.01, according to STATS LLC. New York could have used a strong start from Garcia, having learned earlier in the week that Michael Pineda would be lost for the season because of a shoulder injury.
David Phelps pitched three scoreless and hitless innings of relief for the Yankees, and is a candidate to move into the rotation.
NOTES: The Tigers replaced Young on the 25-man roster by recalling infielder Danny Worth from Triple-A Toledo. ... Derek Jeter got the 1,000th walk of his career in the third inning. ... Leyland won his 1,599th game as a manager, tying Tommy Lasorda for 17th on the career list.
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