NEW YORK — No national anthem, all Yankees.
Robinson Cano hit a grand slam and drove in six runs, rookie Ivan Nova pitched brilliantly into the ninth inning in an unusual relief appearance and New York shook off a 23-hour rain delay to beat the Detroit Tigers 9-3 in their suspended playoff opener Saturday night.
A day after rain wiped out aces Justin Verlander and CC Sabathia after only 1 1/2 innings, the game resumed in the bottom of the second with two new pitchers on the mound.
Cano barely missed a homer on his tiebreaking double in the fifth and hit his grand slam off Al Alburquerque in the sixth.
“My goal is just to win it all,” Cano said.
The Tigers will now try to rebound the same way they did against the Yankees in 2006. That year, Detroit dropped the series opener in New York before winning three straight to stun the heavily favored Yankees in the first round. Game 2 of that playoff was postponed a day by rain. This time, it took two nights to finish the opener.
Along with Curtis Granderson, Cano is one of New York’s two leading contenders for AL MVP — and he showed why. Yankees manager Joe Girardi moved the slugger up from fifth to third in the lineup for the playoffs to get him more protection and pitches to hit.
Smart move so far.
“They put you third, so you want to do your job there. You don’t want to let your manager down,” Cano said. “I did my job today and hopefully I can continue doing it.”
Cano added a run-scoring double in the eighth to tie a club record for RBIs in a postseason game — this is New York’s 50th postseason appearance.
Rather than bring in left-hander Daniel Schlereth to face Cano in the sixth, Tigers manager Jim Leyland went with Alburquerque, a righty.
“To me, that’s one for everyone else to second-guess. To me, that was a no-brainer,” Leyland said. “Left-handers are hitting .177 off Alburquerque, .200 off Schlereth. Cano is .320 off of left-handers, .295 off righties. Alburquerque has had a tremendous ratio of swings and misses. He had only faced him one time; he had struck him out.”
Star of the game
Cano crushes grand slam
Robinson Cano hit a grand slam and drove in six runs as the Yankees shook off a 23-hour rain delay to beat the Detroit Tigers in their suspended playoff opener. Cano’s seventh career postseason homer was the 11th slam in Yankees postseason history and the first since Ricky Ledee connected in the 1999 AL Championship Series against Boston.
Key moment
Big breakout inning
Robinson Cano barely missed a homer on his tiebreaking double in the fifth, and New York broke it open with a six-run sixth against Doug Fister. Brett Gardner had a two-run single with two outs to make it 4-1 and, moments later, Cano connected off Al Alburquerque for his fourth grand slam since Aug. 11.
