ARLINGTON, Texas — Derek Jeter — wearing a Yankees hat and no longer the crown of world champion —insisted he wasn’t thinking about his future after the Yankees’ season ended with a 6-1 loss in Game 6 of the AL Championship Series to the Rangers last night in front of 51,404 at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
“I said I wouldn’t address it until the end of the season,” Jeter said of becoming a free agent. “Obviously, the season is over with, but it just ended. It’s disappointing right now. I wish I could give you more but I don’t have more.”
Just like their captain, the Yankees didn’t have nearly enough to handle the Rangers, who dominated the series.
PHOTOS: RANGERS BEAT YANKEES, 6-1
“They manhandled us,” said general manager Brian Cashman, whose offseason will be spent trying to reach deals with Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Joe Girardi, discovering whether Andy Pettitte wants to pitch again, and seeing if he can entice Cliff Lee to leave the team that ushered the Yankees into winter.
Girardi, who like Jeter is expected to return, didn’t shy away from the pain his club felt when Alex Rodriguez struck out looking against Neftali Feliz for the final out.
“They beat us,” Girardi said. “They out-hit us, they out-pitched us, out-played us. And they beat us.”
AUDIO CLIPS:
JETER ON PHIL HUGHES’ PITCHING IN GAME 6
CURTIS GRANDERSON ON THE RANGERS’ STRONG PERFORMANCE
LANCE BERKMAN ON LOSING THE ALCS
Jeter, who went 0-for-4 and finished the ALCS with a .231 average, was dejected.
“It’s hard to put into words, you work hard and you don’t do it,” Jeter said. “They played better than us. We didn’t have the better team. They beat us.”
Rangers lefty C.J. Wilson, who was the losing pitcher in Game 5, didn’t hide his emotions.
“We took down the champions. We took down the Empire,” Wilson said. “That’s New York and everybody always says you’ve got to go through them.”
While they never admitted it, the Yankees didn’t want to face Lee twice, and as it turned out, they didn’t. But the Rangers won two games started by last night’s winner, Colby Lewis, and one started by Tommy Hunter.
The Yankees tied the game 1-1 in the fifth inning off Lewis. Rodriguez got a leadoff double for his team’s first hit, moved up on a fly out by Lance Berkman and scored on a wild pitch that may have hit Nick Swisher’s left leg after bouncing off the dirt. Yet, it was the last time in the game the Yankees were close.
Phil Hughes and David Robertson combined to give up four runs in the bottom of the fifth. Hughes, after issuing ALCS MVP Josh Hamilton the second of three intentional walks he had in the game, gave up a two-run double to Vladimir Guerrero. Robertson then served up a two-run homer to Nelson Cruz.
“My job was to get us to Game 7,”
said Hughes, who gave up four runs and four hits in 4 2/3 innings. “I pitched horribly in this series. This is a tough one to swallow.”
Lewis, the Game 2 winner who spent the previous two seasons in Japan, limited the Yankees to three runs in eight innings. After the fifth inning, he allowed just one hit (a Berkman triple in the seventh) and one walk (a Brett Gardner walk in the eighth) before giving way to Feliz, who pitched a one-two-three ninth.
The Yankees’ inability to hit Lewis, a less-than-overpowering righty, combined with Hughes’ poor outing, doomed their dream of repeating as champs.
“I don’t know how you measure any of it,” Girardi said. “It all stinks. It’s no fun to be in this position. It’s no fun sitting here after a loss. We take this extremely serious. It stinks.”
In time, the wounds will heal. Helping with that will be the attention paid to Jeter’s situation.
From now until five days after the final out of the World Series, the Yankees have exclusive negotiation rights with the face of their franchise. After that, he can file for free agency and go shopping.
“It’s not likely to strike quickly,” Cashman said of deals with Jeter, Rivera and Girardi. “[It won’t] move as fast as you would like it.”
george.king@nypost.com