Forget Derek Jeter’s quest for 3,000 hits. Now the Yankees are about to discover if they have to survive without the Captain.
Six hits shy of the magical number, Jeter suffered a Grade 1 strain of the right calf getting out of the batter’s box on a fly ball to right in the fifth inning of last night’s 1-0 loss to the Indians in front of 43,551 at Yankee Stadium.
A Grade 1 strain is the least severe of three levels of strains. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not serious.
As soon as he left the box, Jeter grimaced and limped. By the time he reached the dugout, his face was serene but the limp was still noticeable.
Jeter, who singled in the first, was immediately sent for an MRI exam that confirmed the calf strain, and manager Joe Girardi didn’t attempt to sugarcoat the severity of the issue.
“I’m worried about it,” said Girardi, who inserted neophyte Eduardo Nunez for Jeter and may have to live with Nunez for a while at short if Jeter lands on the disabled list. “It’s frustrating. He’s six hits away. You would have hoped that he could have done it in this homestand. For our team it’s frustrating. It’s our leadoff guy. I am not sure what we’re going to discover here, but obviously he looks pretty sore.”
Perhaps if Jeter were a dozen days away from his 27th birthday instead of his 37th, the calf wouldn’t have given out. Or if it did, he would have found a way to play through it.
Girardi’s gut tells him he will be without Jeter tonight when the defending AL champion Rangers open a three-game series at the Stadium. Watching Jeter remove himself from a game, something that rarely happens, was an indication he likely will miss more than one game.
Losing Jeter wasn’t the only negative, as the Yankees flushed a gem by A.J. Burnett. In 7 2/3 innings he allowed one run, five hits, walked one and fanned eight.
The defeat stopped a three-game winning streak and dropped the Yankees 21/2 games behind the AL East-leading Red Sox. It’s the Yankees’ biggest deficit since May 16.
Burnett, rocked by the Red Sox in his previous outing, dropped to 6-5 because Carlos Carrasco (6-3) survived three rocky innings at the beginning to smother the Yankees in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh.
“We didn’t come through when we had chances,” Mark Teixeira said of the Yankees loading the bases with no outs in the first, getting the initial two batters on in the second and the leadoff man aboard in the third without scoring. “After that he cruised.”
To Teixeira, the sight of Jeter pulling himself from a game was discouraging.
“You hate to see it. Derek is not one to come out of a game unless it’s serious,” Teixeira said. “Anytime you see a guy limp off the field, you know it’s something a little more serious.”
Nunez, who has been used at third and short, has been up and down in the field with six errors, and at the plate with a .218 batting average. When the Yankees were doing the free-agent dance with Jeter they pointed to Nunez, who will be 24 tomorrow, as a possible replacement.
Now, for who knows how long, that time has arrived.
Girardi didn’t need Jeter to verbally describe what happened.
“He just walked off the field and you could tell he was done,” said Girardi, who might have to put Brett Gardner on top of the lineup to replace Jeter. “He said it wasn’t real tight when they examined him. Usually, you don’t see him come out of games so my gut feeling is that he wouldn’t be in there [tonight].”
— Additional reporting by Brian Costello
george.king@nypost.com