MLB

Back to Yankees bench for Martin

Russell Martin was out of the lineup again Thursday night because of the stiff lower back that has bothered him for the most of the last week.

But the catcher said the recurrence of the stiffness was not a result of the collision at home with Cleveland’s Casey Kotchman on Wednesday. Instead, the stiffness tends to be aggravated when he’s at the plate, which is why Joe Girardi opted to sit him again.

“Joe recognized that my swing is not there,” Martin said before the Yankees’ 4-3 loss to the White Sox. “I’m not really moving the way I want to move, so I’ll rest one more game. … Personally, I feel like I can go out there.”

“You could see it’s tough for him to finish his swing,” Girardi said. “I think the rotation [of his upper body] bothers him. We’ve been through it before with him. In the short term, we want it to get it better; in the long term, my feeling is he’s gonna be healthy [and] it’s not gonna be a DL case.”

BOX SCORE

Still, it is another setback for Martin, whose average has dipped back to .193. He’s hoping his back improves so his average can do the same.

“It’s almost there,” Martin said. “It’s better than it was a couple of days ago, but at this point, I’m not really helping in the lineup.”

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Robin Ventura has the surprising White Sox in first place in the weak AL Central. The former Met and Yankee said he has taken aspects of all managers he played for, but most people associate his style with Joe Torre.

“I think personality-wise, people say I’m more like Joe, but obviously I’m a long way from that,” Ventura said. “You see things when you play. For me, playing for him, there were a lot of things he did right … that you try to emulate. But I also took stuff from Bobby [Valentine].”

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Ventura said his new third baseman Kevin Youkilis has a “clean slate” after a falling out with Valentine in Boston.

Youkilis started last night and still isn’t sure why things soured between him and the Red Sox.

“I just came up every day and tried to do my job,” said Youkilis, who was traded to Chicago on Sunday but still booed by the Yankee Stadium crowd. “But I didn’t play well out of the gate and it went downhill from there. And that’s on me. I underperformed early on and guess they had a different route to take.”

Rookie Will Middlebrooks took his spot at third with the Red Sox. When asked if it was that simple, Youkilis said: “Things are never that simple in this game. I’ll leave it at that. I have no excuses. There’s only one person to blame for my performance and that’s myself.”