SEATTLE — Mark Teixeira is one of the few hitters who have had success against Seattle starter Felix Hernandez over the years, so it came as little surprise that he was able to provide the big hit in Monday night’s win over the Mariners.
And yet the way the Yankees rattled Hernandez seemed to shock the fans at Safeco Field.
Teixeira and the Yankees chased Seattle’s top pitcher after 4 2/3 innings, his shortest outing of the season, in a 7-3 win over the Mariners.
“The way (Yankees starter Michael Pineda) was pitching, we didn’t know how many we’d need,” said Teixeira, who finished off the Yankees’ scoring with a fifth-inning grand slam that put Hernandez in a 7-0 hole. “But anytime you can score seven runs off Felix Hernandez, we’ll take it. It doesn’t happen often.”
Teixeira is now hitting .303 with six home runs in 66 career at-bats against Hernandez. He’s also off to one of the best starts of his career, having now hit 15 home runs to match Toronto’s Josh Donaldson for the second most in the American League. His 39 RBIs lead the AL.
“It’s still early,” said Teixeira, who has been slowed by injuries in recent years and hasn’t hit more than 24 home runs in a season since 2011. “Fifty games into the season, you see some weird numbers out there. For me, if I stay healthy, I know what the numbers are going to look like at the end of the year.”
Teixeira is off to a somewhat surprising start, but no one should have been overly surprised that he delivered the big blow against Hernandez. Especially Teixeira himself.
“Nothing surprises me in baseball,” he said, “good or bad.”