WOE-TOWN: Raul Ibanez walks back to the dugout after striking out during last night’s 2-1 loss at Detroit in Game 3 of the ALCS, dropping the Bombers into a 3-0 hole in the best-of-seven series. (AP)
DETROIT — The 2004 Red Sox? Stop, in this ALCS these Yankees more resemble the 2012 Red Sox — lifeless and hopeless.
There have been 30 innings. They have led in none. That’s right, zero. They have scored in two innings. The ninth inning of Game 1 and the ninth inning of last night’s Game 3, all of the runs coming via homers.
So until they prove that they can score in another inning or in another way, or they can ever actually take a darn lead in an actual game, why don’t we table comparisons to bloody socks and Idiots and the most improbable comeback in the history of the sport.
The Yankees and 2004 Red Sox share this and, for now, only this in common — both trailed an ALCS three-games-to-none. The Yankees fell into that hole last night, dropped into this grave with another offensive performance so incompetent that Jason Bay would scoff at it. That was until the ninth inning.
So now we have to interpret that ninth inning of a Game 3, 2-1 loss to the Tigers. Was it the last best shot to get back into this series gone away? Or was it a building block? Was it a brick to begin building a skyscraper?
Look, I have no idea if the Yankees actually believe they can win this series. They said stuff about doing just that. But so does every team that has ever fallen into that 0-3 death trap, and just those 2004 Red Sox made those words have meaning. I have no idea if the Yankees have the leadership to truly sell this to one another. Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are hurt and not in Motown. Alex Rodriguez ducked the media before and after a Game 3 in which he did not start last night.
Derek Lowe, the link to those 2004 Red Sox, can say things like, “There has to be belief among everyone that this can be done.” But, ultimately, Lowe is a seldom-used reliever.
Is there truly someone in the room who can sell this concept: CC Sabathia starts on full rest today and Andy Pettitte tomorrow. They are absolutely the two guys the Yankees would want going at this time under these circumstances. Just get the series back to New York and maybe finally that will rouse an apathetic crowd to embrace an incredible possibility and provide the home team some momentum and the Tigers some fear of embracing infamy.
And here is the last part — because the offense has been the culprit of this 0-3 deficit — do the Yankees believe those ninth-inning at-bats in which they grinded like an O’Neill or a Bernie are something that they can build upon and sustain over the course of a game? Over the course of four games? Because you can talk all you want about taking ’em one at a time, but the Yankees need a four-game winning streak now or winter comes early.
“That’s one thing, we always fight,” Mark Teixeira said.
No they don’t. The Yankees didn’t fight last night. At least not until the ninth inning. Until then they were Ichiro Suzuki (two hits) away from being perfect-gamed by Justin Verlander. And this was with Verlander spending the middle innings giving them a buffet of hitter’s counts of 2-0 and 3-0 and 3-1 that they failed to capitalize upon.
And then in the ninth, Eduardo Nunez led off by winning a nine-pitch at-bat by smoking a homer to left. Brett Gardner, like Nunez, injected into this lineup to see if he could add some life, grounded out after eight pitches, but the battle knocked Verlander out at 132 pitches. With two outs, Teixeira singled on the seventh pitch from Phil Coke and Robinson Cano finally got a hit, breaking a postseason record of 0-for-29, with a single to left.
At that moment, Girardi could have turned to A-Rod, but knew it would end up being a righty-righty matchup against Joaquin Benoit, and that moved him to stick lefty-lefty with Raul Ibanez vs. Coke. Another sign of how far A-Rod has fallen. Ibanez struck out at the end of his own seven-pitch at-bat.
History says he took the Yankees down with him because as even Lowe conceded, “it’s obviously hard [to come back from 0-3]. It has only happened one time in history.”
If it is going to happen a second time it is because Sabathia and Pettitte are going to be great the next two days and because that ninth inning was not the last best shot by what has so far been a woeful offense, but rather that first brick in the skyscraper.
joel.sherman@nypost.com