BALTIMORE — Joe Girardi decided he wasn’t afraid of the previous postseason struggles of Nick Swisher and Mark Teixeira, slotting the two of them next to each other in the Yankees lineup last night.
The two responded with productive games at the plate in last night’s 7-2 ALDS Game 1 win over the Orioles.
“It’s great,” said Teixeira, whose RBI single in the fourth tied the game, though he was nailed at second trying to stretch it to a double on a bad leg. “You always want to put away failures. [Swisher] and I have both been around a long time and we’ve had plenty of failures — regular season, postseason whatever it is. It’s just nice to help the team out.”
Swisher, a postseason disaster throughout much of his Yankees career, had a single and a pair of walks before adding a sacrifice fly in the decisive five-run rally in the ninth.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” said Swisher, who was 6-for-41 in his past two playoff series. “I’m not trying to do too much.”
Teixeira had a similar approach. After going hitless in 17 plate appearances against the Rangers in the 2010 ALCS, he went 3-for-18 with one RBI in last year’s ALDS loss to the Tigers.
He also had only one hit in 12 at-bats after returning from a strained left calf for the final three games of the regular season. But he was solid at the plate and even better in the field last night.
After the game, Teixeira lamented being thrown out by right fielder Chris Davis after he hit the ball off the right-field wall.
“He made a perfect throw,” said Teixeira, who had vowed to be conservative on the base paths to protect his fragile calf. “That was being conservative. It’s disappointing when you can’t get a double on that.”
He helped make up for his baserunning error with a fantastic defensive play in the fifth, when he was able to scoop Russell Martin’s bounced throw on a swinging bunt from Lew Ford.
“To me, that’s what I was most proud of,” Teixeira said. “If the ball gets by me, they have second and third and might have a big inning. I got a little bit lucky. It was a tough hop. I stuck with it and it ended up sticking in my glove. I could not let that ball get by me.”
Throughout the game, Teixeira, a Maryland native who bypassed the Orioles in free agency after the 2008 season, was booed loudly by the crowd of 47,841 at Camden Yards.
But he’ll take that in exchange for a win.
“I’m feeling a little better every day,” Teixeira said. “We didn’t decide to score any runs until the ninth inning, but glad we got the win. … Whether we score runs in the first or the ninth, it’s OK. And I had a good feeling about the ninth.”
dan.martin@nypost.com