Here is the thing about the Yankees. It is impossible to ignore the fact that they aren’t exactly filled with Ty Cobb practitioners of small ball. They are something like 3-for-their-last-3,576 with the bases loaded. They are hitting something like .003 with runners in scoring position, and worse than that with two out and ducks on the pond.
Their RISP is B-A-D.
But think about being Dillon Gee for a moment. Think about how well you were pitching last night after tip-toeing through a first-inning jam (and doing what all pitchers ought to do against the Yankees, loading the bases and then inducing an inning-ending double play). Think about Gee blanking the Yankees across the next four innings, looking razor-sharp doing so.
Think about Gee, pitching that well, standing on the mound with a 2-1 lead, two outs, a man on third, two strikes on Mark Teixeira. Think about all the hot coals you already have danced across, the Canos and the Grandersons, the A-Rods and the Swishers and, so far, the Teixeiras.
“We have a lot of guys who can get you,” Teixeira will say a little later. “You can’t really take a breath against that lineup. Say what you want about how we’ve done with runners on base, but we have a lot of guys who know how to hit the ball over the fence, and that will wear on you after a while.”
Did it wear on Gee?
Well, for one of the only times of the night he spins his breaking ball a little too much. And Teixeira, even with his struggles this year, knows what to do with baseballs left on tees.
He smokes a screaming line drive that probably wouldn’t have cleared many major-league fences other than this one, in right field at Yankee Stadium, and that’s underlined by the fact that Kirk Nieuwenhuis, playing right field, doesn’t stop dashing toward the wall until he was tackled by it, before being reminded he’s not in Flushing anymore.
Home run. Three-two, Yankees, on the way to 4-2, Yankees, on the way to another victory in which the long ball carries the Yankees to the bell lap. Baseball is a lint catcher of quirky stats, and the popular one now is that in each of the Yankees’ 33 victories, they have hit at least one home run.
Some see that as a harbinger for autumn disaster.
Others see something else:
“Home runs count, don’t they?” Teixeira says, grinning.
Yes. They count. Good luck to you, dear hurler, trying to negotiate 27 outs in this lineup when everyone south of Derek Jeter in the batting order has a driver in their hands at all times. Dillon Gee, pitching a terrific game, surely found that out. He’s not the first.
“I would throw that pitch again,” he will say in the losing locker room. “But obviously just a little bit better one.”
It is funny to hear the muttering about the Yankees’ offense. Sure, it would be nice to be better than C-R-U-D with RISP, and it would be helpful if they could hit a lick with the bases juiced, and, yes, it would be terrific if they could come through with pesky two-out singles.
But you know something? You know plays exactly that way? The Mets play exactly that way. Before this weekend, they have lived on two-out hits and a precisely-timed and opportunistic offense, and we have celebrated them for that. And you know something else? Ask manager Terry Collins what he would rather have: a scrapbook of timely singles or the ability to plant baseballs in faraway seats up and down a lineup.
“You don’t survive on singles in this park,” he said last night.
So the Yankees will keep swinging, they will keep running into mistakes and bashing them into the bleachers, and they will just have to live with the fact their No. 8 hitter last night, Eric Chavez, has hit as many as 34 homers in a big-league season and the Mets’ 8-hole hitter, Josh Thole has all of seven home runs in 799 major league plate appearances, as No. 8 hitters are wont to have.
They will find a way to muddle through. They’re stubborn that way.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com