HOUSTON — We talk about how long the season is. We mention great years that began brutally. We offer perspective that every team will endure a three-game losing streak, but that in June or July it blends into the relentless schedule.
But, come on, all the logic in the world cannot erase just how pig-in-a-tutu horrible 0-3 looks and feels for any team, much less one with the historic implications of the Yankees and a half-billion dollar free-agent bill from the offseason.
Of course, the Yankees did not face a must-win Thursday night. But it was kind of a “had to win.” There was no magic number about to evaporate. Only a sense of magic wafting away.
The Mets already had lost in the afternoon, joining the Angels as the majors’ lone 0-3 blights. The Yankees wanted no part of that club, keeping it an oh-for-New York kind of season. Did not want to get on a plane to Toronto, land at 5 a.m. and heap even one more kernel of pressure onto Masahiro Tanaka’s first start Friday night.
It is bad enough to be swept. Worse to do it to open a campaign. Something close to an April catastrophe to have it happen against the Astros, losers of at least 106 games in each of the last three seasons.
“It’s a lot better,” Joe Girardi understated about being 1-2 rather than 0-3 following a 4-2 triumph.
Consider that with a victory Houston would have been 3-0 and, thus, three games over .500 for the first time since — wait for it — July 25, 2009. Consider that the Astros had only won two of 15 games ever against the Yankees before winning the first two games of this series. Those previous triumphs were that bizarre six-pitcher no-hitter on June 11, 2003, and last April 29 when the Yankees’ 3-4-5 hitters were Astro-nomically bad — Vernon Wells, Travis Hafner and Brennan Boesch.
The offseason spending orgy was designed to make sure such offensive ugliness disappeared with David Adams and Chris Stewart.
They are not there yet. They avoided 0-3, but not with a steady, assuring win.
Ivan Nova danced in and out of trouble, Girardi believed, because he had not faced batters in a week and a half due to a late spring rainout. Nova — short on command and ferociousness with his key-pitch curve — allowed 13 base runners in 5 ²/₃ innings with a wildness that included five walks and two hit batsmen, but just one strikeout. But boy was he timely. He induced a career-high four crisis-averting double plays.
“He found a way,” Girardi said.
Adam Warren — in eye-opening work for its calm dominance — and Shawn Kelley followed with seven-up, seven-down, four-strikeout relief. David Robertson — for the first time as the official heir to Mariano Rivera — came on to protect a ninth-inning lead.
Girardi had to go all the way to Panama to see Rivera this spring and won’t see him again until the master of the last pitch is part of the first-pitch ceremony Monday at the home opener. The manager mentioned that it was strange to call to the pen and summon someone different. But the results were Rivera-esque: Three batters, three outs, 13 pitches.
So within the first 2014 win for the Yankees this was an important first for Robertson: His ninth career save was the first of the rest of his new life. The strong pen work made sure another game of toothless offense did not undercut the Yanks.
For the series, the Yankees managed just seven runs. They had four doubles, but no homers. Alfonso Soriano went hitless and, for the most part, Mark Teixeira looked hopeless. Soriano flied to right in his first at-bat of the season and then did not get a ball out of the infield in his next 11 tries. Teixeira never left the infield in his last two games, appearing out of whack and overmatched in those eight at-bats. They were middle of the lineup and center of the problem.
The Yankees had just seven hits, five were by Nos. 8-9 hitters Ichiro Suzuki and Yangervis Solarte. The last of Solarte’s three hits went 30 feet, a high pop that landed among three confused Astros for an RBI single.
The Yanks certainly were willing to take the good fortune after two bad days. After all, even with all the logic in the world, 1-2 just looks and feels so much better than 0-3.