Bombers bits

• Girardi named David Phelps as the Yankees' starter for Wednesday's game against the Mariners. New York had to slot Phelps in for one game next week while Michael Pineda is serving his suspension for using a foreign substance.

• Ratings for Yankees games on the YES Network are up 38 percent from year to year, the network announced on Friday. Thursday's Yankees-Red Sox telecast averaged a 4.75 TV HH rating (467,000 total viewers) in the New York area, making it the second-highest-rated YES telecast this season, behind Masahiro Tanaka's April 4 Major League debut.

• Brian McCann became the sixth Yankees player to appear in a game at first base this year when he played there in the ninth inning of Thursday night's 14-5 win at Boston. It was the first time McCann had appeared in a professional game at any defensive position other than catcher, although he told Girardi he had played first base while in high school. McCann played two more innings at first in Friday's 13-1 loss.

• Brett Gardner's strange box-score line on Thursday (four runs scored, no hits) was a true Yankees rarity. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Gardner was just the second Yankee in history to score four runs in a game during which he didn't have a hit. It hadn't happened in 101 years, since Bert Daniels did it in 1913 in a game in Detroit. Various players from other teams have scored four runs without a hit since then, most recently Carlos Pena with the 2012 Rays.