The Yankees bats belong on the back of a milk carton right now because they have not been seen in days.
The Bronx Bombers looked more like bumblers last night in a 4-3 loss to the Royals in 11 innings when they went 2-for-16 with runners in scoring position and stranded a season-high 15 runners on base in front of 40,164 fans at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees outhit the Royals 12-4 in the game, but 11 of those hits were singles and only three resulted in runs. It is just the third time since 1958 that the Yankees outhit an opponent by at least eight and lost the game.
This was just the continuation of a trend the Yankees have shown for most of the season when they have failed to manufacture runs. After an offensive explosion Sunday in Texas, the Yankees are back in a funk.
“The bottom line is we’re better than this, and right now we’re struggling offensively,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.
It appeared like the Yankees might still be able to steal a win because of another strong outing by A.J. Burnett, who allowed one hit in seven innings. But the bullpen coughed up the game with David Robertson allowing the game-tying run in the eighth and Buddy Carlyle and Luis Ayala failing to close the door in extra innings.
The Royals had just four hits, but walked 11 times in the game.
Royals starter Vin Mazzaro struggled from the start with his control, but the Yankees failed to take advantage, a trend that continued all night. They stranded a runner in scoring position in six innings, including leaving the bases loaded in the third and seventh.
“It seemed that we had Mazzaro on the ropes in every inning,” Girardi said. “We got him out of there after four but we only had two runs. When you give that many opportunities away teams are going to score runs and it’s hard to win games.”
Burnett left the game with a 2-1 lead after seven. With Rafael Soriano (sore elbow) and Joba Chamberlain (rest) both unavailable, Girardi turned to Robertson to pitch the eighth. A night after escaping a jam, Robertson failed and gave up the tying run on a single by ex-Yankee Wilson Betemit.
“When it comes down to it, I flat out blew the game,” Robertson said.
Carlyle entered the game in the 10th after Mariano Rivera threw a perfect ninth. Carlyle gave up a go-ahead RBI double to ex-Met Jeff Francoeur to make it 3-2. Francouer was in the middle of an interesting sequence in the middle of the game when Burnett hit him in the back with a pitch, a half-inning after Royals reliever Nathan Adcock hit Robinson Cano in the head.
Cano left the game and underwent a CT scan that showed no concussion.
Burnett said the pitch to Francouer got away from him and he did not hit him intentionally.
Curtis Granderson was the one Yankee who managed to come up with big hits. He gave the team a 2-0 lead in the third with his Major League best 12th home run of the season. He then singled home Russell Martin in the 10th inning to tie the game, 3-3.
The lead did not last when Carlyle walked Chris Getz to start he 11th. Ayala came on and gave up the winning run on a sacrifice fly by rookie Eric Hosmer, who hit his first major league home run earlier in the game, the only hit allowed by Burnett.
In the end, the batters were to blame for the loss, though. Derek Jeter went 0-for-6 for the fourth time in his career after three straight multi-hit games. Alex Rodriguez went 1-for-5, the lone hit an infield single.
“As a whole the last few weeks we haven’t done a good job of manufacturing runs,” said Brett Gardner, who went 2-for-4. “That’s baseball.”