Yanks rally from 5-0 deficit, win in 10

Finally, there is something about velocity that even Phil Hughes can embrace. It just so happens that a strong bullpen and a clutch lineup can make everyone forget a pitcher's bad start in a hurry.

Hughes left the Yankees with a five-run deficit Thursday night, but it didn't matter. Bartolo Colon, Jorge Posada and Nick Swisher left them laughing.

Posada led off the bottom of the ninth with a home run on Orioles closer Kevin Gregg's first pitch, which tied the score and took the struggling Yankees starter off the hook.

Then, after Mark Teixeira walked to lead off the 10th inning and Alex Rodriguez ripped a double into the leftfield corner for his third hit of the game, Swisher clinched a walk-off 6-5 win with a sacrifice fly to rightfield against Mike Gonzalez.

Mariano Rivera got the win. Swisher got a face full of pie. And Hughes got a reprieve from his well-chronicled struggle to throw the ball hard, at least temporarily. "He's still not right," Joe Girardi said, "and it's our job to get this kid right."

Hughes has had three starts in 2011, and no good ones. He had a couple of good innings Thursday night and occasionally reached the low 90s on the radar gun. Then his fastball lost its bite, he made some mistakes -- Nick Markakis hit a two-run homer in the third and an RBI double in the fifth -- and Hughes was done before the fifth inning was.

"It's frustrating. I feel like I'm doing nothing to help the team right now," the 2010 All-Star said. "It seems like it's 18 days between my starts. That's not a good feeling, answering those questions about how poorly I'm pitching. But what are you going to do?

"I've got to fight," he said. "I'm really proud of the guys, coming back after I dug us a hole."

He felt like digging a hole and crawling inside as he left to boos and was replaced by Colon. But Colon changed the whole tone of the game. Yes, he did allow Hughes' fifth run to score on Vladimir Guerrero's two-out single. But after that, he gave the Orioles nothing.

"Bartolo was the key," Posada said. "He gave us a chance to come back."

To the Yankees, a five-run hole is nothing much. "With this team, we know we're always coming back. We know we always have a chance," said Colon, a career starter who has shown value as a Yankees reliever (three outings, all in Hughes' games, all at least three innings).

The Yankees chipped away against Orioles starter Jake Arrieta, who had held them hitless through four innings. Rodriguez and Robinson Cano hit doubles in the fifth. Teixeira (bloop double) and Rodriguez (sacrifice fly) had RBIs in the sixth (the latter passed Ted Williams and Al Simmons and moved into 11th place on the all-time RBI list).

There were other heroics, too. Joba Chamberlain notched an unofficial save -- a kick save and a beauty. Having uncorked what looked like a wild pitch in the eighth, he raced from the mound, took Russell Martin's flip, blocked the plate with his leg and slapped a tag on swift pinch runner Felix Pie, who appeared to beat him home but never touched the plate. "I kind of peeked and saw his foot," Chamberlain said.

Later, Martin was hopeful that Hughes' days between starts won't seem so long. "I think he's not far away from turning that corner," the catcher said. "He threw more fastballs, and that's a good sign right there."

Hughes can take heart in knowing that slow starts don't last forever. Posada was in an 0-for-19 slump until the Yankees came home after a quiet loss in Boston Sunday. "You forget all about Sunday and look forward to the next night," said Posada, whose homer was his team-leading fifth. "That's pretty much true for everybody in this room."

"You're not always going to have your 'A' stuff," Girardi said before the game. "Pitchers only have it about one-third of the time. You've got to find a way."