The Yankees will get Alex Rodriguez back today.
But unless he brings Mantle, Maris and Mattingly along with him, it might not matter all that much.
Joe Girardi’s bunch managed just six hits against five Orioles pitchers — none of whom will ever be confused with Jim Palmer — as Baltimore left town with two wins in three tries following an 8-3 win yesterday at Yankee Stadium.
Orioles first baseman Mark Reynolds launched a pair of homers — his second two-homer game of the series — as the Birds smacked Phil Hughes around and moved within two games of the first-place Yankees in the bunched-up AL East. Baltimore trailed the Yankees by seven games on Aug. 17.
The teams meet again later this week at Camden Yards as the Yankees embark on a 10-game trip. First, however, they have three games with Tampa Bay beginning this afternoon in St. Petersburg. The Rays sit just 3 1/2 games behind the fading division leaders.
Following yesterday’s loss, the Yankees’ eighth in their last 12 games, Girardi said A-Rod, out since July 25 with a broken bone in his left hand, would likely be in the lineup today.
“We can use his bat, that’s for sure,’’ the manager said. “We need him to come back and be productive for us.’’
Yesterday, the only productive player in that lineup was one who was in the minors when the Labor Day weekend began.
Chris Dickerson, called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Saturday when rosters expanded, filled in more than capably for Curtis Granderson (hamstring tendinitis). Dickerson contributed a two-run homer, scored two runs and turned in a pair of highlight-reel catches in center field. Otherwise, the beating the Orioles gave to Hughes would have been much worse.
As it was, Hughes — who allowed eight hits and five earned runs in five-plus innings — came up ever so tiny in a game the Yankees needed to win.
Given a 3-1 lead courtesy of Dickerson’s two-run homer in the second and Nick Swisher’s RBI single in the fifth, the right-hander — who had allowed a long, solo homer to Reynolds in the top of the fifth — came unglued without retiring a batter in the sixth. A walk and a pair of singles pulled the Orioles within a run before Reynolds again reached the bleachers in left to make it 5-3.
“[Hughes] just stopped making pitches,” said a testy Girardi. “That was my decision to leave him in there. … Reynolds is a guy who is going to strike out his share. … [Hughes] hung a breaking ball.’’
Hughes, who had been undefeated in his previous seven starts in The Bronx, said he just lost it in that sixth inning.
“For whatever reason, I just didn’t have it,” he said. “The ball was finding the middle of the plate. … Sometimes you have innings where you just can’t figure it out. It came at a bad time.’’
The Orioles then pounded the Yankees bullpen during a three-run eighth that sent much of the crowd of 46,501 heading for the Major Deegan.
It was an easy choice. Holiday traffic over a train wreck.
“My concern is that [we] play better baseball,” Girardi said before lapsing into a Yogi-ism. “[It’s] not where [we] are in the standings because we’re still in control of our own destination.’’
But if not for an Orioles’ meltdown on Saturday — a bases-loaded walk and a key error in the decisive seventh inning — Baltimore could have swept the series.
“Nobody’s concerned in here, guys,” said Swisher. “We’re two games up in the beginning of September. If you told me that in spring training, I’d buy into that.”
But Eric Chavez said there’s always concern when a team is losing.
“We just have to play better. I don’t know what else to tell you,” he said. “We were just lucky to get that one [Saturday]. We could have easily gotten swept.’’
“It happens to every team every year at some point in the season,” Derek Jeter said. “We have series where we’ve played well and series where we’ve played poorly. Right now, we’re playing poorly.’’
dburke@nypost.com