Hiroki Kuroda has been dealing with a lack of run support that hurt him throughout his first season as a Yankee and that didn’t change last night.
Until Raul Ibanez’s dramatic ninth-inning, pinch hit homer, Kuroda was on the hook for the loss despite giving up just two runs in 8 1/3 innings to the Orioles.
Ibanez’s second homer gave the Yankees a 3-2, 12-inning win to go up, 2-1, in the best-of-five ALDS.
The right-hander surrendered just five hits, but two were solo homers. The first was hit by Ryan Flaherty in the third inning, followed by Manny Machado in the fifth.
And he got stronger as the game went on, retiring the final 11 batters he faced after hitting Chris Davis with a pitch in the fifth.
It was Kuroda’s fourth postseason start, the previous three coming with the Dodgers, with mixed results.
After two solid outings in 2008, Kuroda pitched in the NLCS in 2009 after missing the NLDS with an injured neck and gave up six runs in 1 1/3 innings.
He showed last night 2009 outing was a fluke, as he believed it was.
Leading up to last night’s game, Kuroda insisted that last playoff start was not on his mind and it showed.
Instead, he continued his success at his new home, Yankee Stadium.
Kuroda went 11-6 with a 2.72 ERA in The Bronx this season and took advantage of the extra rest Joe Girardi gave him by pitching Andy Pettitte in Game 2 in Baltimore.
Kuroda will be a free agent after this season and has said he isn’t thinking about his future, but he’s been invaluable to the Yankees after signing a one-year deal in January.
Not only was he their most durable starting pitcher, he showed last night he’s able to deal with pitching in a playoff game at Yankee Stadium.
Kuroda had somewhat mixed results toward the end of the year and there was fear he was tiring due to the amount of innings he pitched — a career-high 219 2/3 .
But he put at least some of those worries to rest last night with a sterling 105-pitch effort.
Though it wasn’t good enough to get him the win, it was more than good enough for the Yankees.