Hiroki Kuroda pitched nearly as well as he has all year, yet he was headed to a defeat until Raul Ibanez homered with one out in the bottom of the ninth in a game the Yankees went on to win, 3-2, Wednesday night to take a 2-1 lead over the Orioles in the ALDS.
And though Kuroda, like the rest of his Yankees teammates, had seen Ibanez come up with dramatic blows before, the right-hander still was astounded by the two solo blasts.
“It seemed like it was something out of a cartoon,” Kuroda said through a translator. “It was unbelievable.”
Kuroda left the game one out into the ninth inning having retired the last 11 batters he faced, but he still appeared destined for a loss because of two mistakes.
The first came to Ryan Flaherty, whose third-inning homer gave Baltimore a 1-0 lead, and the second was a leadoff homer by Manny Machado to make it 2-1.
The Machado home run was the final hit Kuroda surrendered, although he did plunk Chris Davis with a pitch in the fourth.
“He kept us in the game,” Russell Martin said. “When a guy pitches like that, you definitely don’t want an ‘L’ next to his name.”
Kuroda struck out three and walked only one in his first playoff appearance since getting ripped by the Phillies in the 2009 NLCS with the Dodgers. He gave up six runs over just 1 ¹/₃ innings in the loss, but said in the days leading up to last night’s game that performance would have no bearing on this one.
He was confident that game was an aberration, since he had missed the NLDS with an injured neck and pitched well in two starts in the postseason with the Los Angeles the previous year.
Last night, he continued his success at his new home, where he went 11-6 with a 2.72 ERA in The Bronx this season and took advantage of the extra rest Joe Girardi gave him by pitching Andy Pettitte in Game 2 in Baltimore.
“I was a little bit nervous, but overall I felt pretty much the same way as I did all season,” said Kuroda, adding the seven days off did his arm some good. “I think it was really beneficial for me having this rest because throughout the season I kept in rotation every five days, but having the rest really did me a favor.”
Kuroda will be a free agent after this season and has said he isn’t thinking about his future, but he’s been invaluable to the Yankees after signing in January.
Not only was he their most durable starting pitcher, he showed last night he’s able to deal with pitching in a playoff game at Yankee Stadium.
Kuroda had somewhat mixed results toward the end of the year and there was fear he was tiring due to the amount of innings he pitched — a career-high 219 2/3.
But he put at least some of those worries to rest last night with a sterling 105-pitch effort.
And although it wasn’t good enough to get him the win, it was good enough for the Yankees.
dan.martin@nypost.com