A victory, yes, but ouch this hurt.
Of course, the first reaction any time Derek Jeter leaves a game early with an injury is he must really be hurting. The Yankee captain departed the Stadium last night with strained left quadriceps, an injury that could have him headed to the disabled list for the fifth time in his career.
The Yankees beat the Rays 6-1 for a split of their four-game series, but now have to worry about Jeter’s availability.
An MRI exam performed on the shortstop’s left quad showed a strain, and Joe Girardi admitted it will be a few days, if not longer, before Jeter returns to action.
“No matter how his body feels, he wants to be out there,” Girardi said. “But with these conditions, you jeopardize really hurting yourself badly.
“We don’t want that, because we can’t afford to miss him for a long period of time.”
Jeter said he first experienced tightness in the quad while running to first base during Sunday’s game against Tampa Bay, but thought it might just be a cramp.
That thought process changed as he was running to first base in last night’s first inning, successfully avoiding a double play.
“I felt it, so I didn’t run as hard as I could because I didn’t want to do anything that would make it worse,” Jeter said.
He returned to his shortstop position for the second inning, but was replaced by Wilson Betemit for the top of the third.
“I felt something, so I didn’t want to be stupid,” Jeter said.
An already stretched thin unit – Jason Giambi is nursing a sore left groin and Shelley Duncan was finishing a two-game suspension – went with Betemit at shortstop and Morgan Ensberg at first base for the game’s remainder.
Girardi isn’t considering the DL as an option for Jeter just yet, but expects an evaluation to be made at some point in the week. Jeter would prefer to end the speculation by playing today.
“My timetable would be [today], but I don’t think that’s going to work out,” Jeter said before the Yankees departed for Kansas City.
A total wet blanket wasn’t tossed over the evening, thanks to Mike Mussina’s dominant performance over six innings. The right-hander allowed one earned run on two hits with one walk and three strikeouts, picking up where Chien-Ming Wang left off the previous day.
After a shaky start to the extended weekend, with Ian Kennedy and Andy Pettitte bombing, Yankees pitchers held Tampa Bay to one run over the final 19 innings of the series.
The Yankees pulled away in the sixth, scoring twice against Jason Hammel (0-1) to build a 4-1 cushion.
Bobby Abreu opened with a triple and scored on Alex Rodriguez’s broken-bat single before Hideki Matsui smashed an RBI double.
In the seventh Matsui delivered an RBI single against reliever Scott Dohmann before Robinson Cano singled home an additional run.
Abreu provided most of the offensive heroics, going 3-for-3, missing only a double for the cycle.
Mussina (1-1) retired the first six batters he faced before Jonny Gomes homered into the left-field seats leading off the third, slicing the Yankees’ lead to 2-1.
Abreu homered with two outs in the first, a two-run shot down the right-field line, to get the Yankees started.
“It’s good to see us scoring more than three runs,” said Girardi, whose team topped four runs for the first time this season.
“It’s good when you get production all up and down your lineup.”
mpuma@nypost.com