OOPS! Adam Jones reacts after dropping a fly ball hit by Vernon Wells (inset) during the seventh inning of the Yankees’ 5-2 victory over the Orioles last night. Three runs scored on the play. (
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Well, that was a well-earned victory over the feisty Orioles Friday night at Yankee Stadium, wasn’t it? Scrappy and gutty, the kind of game that the homer-happy Yankees of the prior few seasons would have lost.
No? Not buying it?
Neither is The Post.
Don’t call the Yankees’ 5-2 defeat of Baltimore “Small Ball,” because it barely was that. Call it Lucky Ball — not very catchy, sorry — and if you root for this team, take it as a positive sign from the baseball gods that this wacky win both lifted your team over .500, at 5-4, for the first time this season and elevated the Yankees into a tie with Boston atop the American League East.
Don’t misinterpret this. Any time you get the sort of performance CC Sabathia delivered last night, striking out nine over eight innings on this brisk night, you don’t go home thinking, “We stole one.”
Yet against the team that seemingly did so little wrong in 2012, the Yankees pulled out a tight one because the Orioles made one ginormous mistake, another snafu for the ages and a few other glaring miscues.
“The beauty about baseball, you show up tomorrow with a better plan,” Orioles center fielder Adam Jones said. “Some days you’re the hero, some days you’re the goat. Today, I was slap__.”
Indeed, when the All-Star Jones tracked Vernon Wells’ well-struck ball to straightaway center f ield, we appeared headed to the eighth inning with a 2-2 tie. But Jones, blowing a bubble with his gum, started to make a backhanded catch — and then dropped the ball, allowing three Yankees runners to score. It evoked memories of when a bubble-blowing Jones failed to snare a Derek Jeter triple in last year’s AL Division Series, yet this one was far more egregious, so much so that Wells received no RBI on the three-run play.
O’s manager Buck Showalter, refusing to lay all of the blame on one of the franchise icons, said, “There was a lot more to” the loss. An accurate take.
The Yankees produced those three runs on zero hits. Yes, Francisco Cervelli drew a leadoff walk, and Brett Gardner sacrificed him over to second and Cervelli advanced to third on Robinson Cano’s groundout to Baltimore shortstop J.J. Hardy. The O’s intentionally walked Kevin Youkilis to set up a matchup of lefty reliever Troy Patton against Yankees lefty slugger Travis Hafner.
Hafner, after working the count full, got hit by a Patton sinker in his left quadriceps, loading the bases and setting up the matchup between Wells and right-hander Pedro Strop. That battle should’ve gone to Strop, if only Jones had caught the ball.
“I just missed it,” Jones said. “You can say rain. You could say it’s cold. You could say anything. The wind. I was there and didn’t catch it. It cost my team the game.”
“Trust me, it’s quite frustrating. Making a mistake like during the game, late in the game, you cost your team the game. It’s not a good feeling.”
“I thought he was going to be able to run it down,” manager Joe Girardi said of Jones. “The chances of that happening are slim, slim, slim. But we caught a break.”
Jones’ teammate Manny Machado shared that sentiment after he ended the visitors’ eighth-inning rally quite suddenly, hitting into a stunning, 4-6-3-6-5-3-4 triple play — just the Yankees second triple-killing since 1968. With runners on first and second and no out, the O’s found bad luck as Machado hit a line-drive short-hop that Robinson Cano flipped to Jayson Nix at second for one out, and Nix threw to third for another out. Machado, however, should’ve stayed at first base, as both he and Showalter acknowledged.
It proved that kind of night for the Yankees, who made fewer mistakes than their opponents and capitalized on the Orioles’ sloppiness. In all, Baltimore walked six and hit two batters.
You give the Yankees credit, and most important, you grow encouraged by Sabathia, who produced his second straight strong outing.
You just don’t celebrate this win for something it wasn’t. This was no trendsetter; Jones will make that catch today. Call it a one-off payback for the Orioles’ reservoir full of good fortune from 2012.