Chris Capuano stuck the Mets between the closing train doors last night, then watched the muscular Yankees slam the Subway Series sliders on them.
One night after R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball dipped and darted its way past the Yankees bats, the hosts feasted on the slop Capuano served up at Yankee Stadium.
Pitchers of his ilk can compete against light-hitting National League teams, but the thick and rich Yankees’ biceps at home were a beating waiting to happen.
Home runs by Russell Martin, Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez off Capuano backed an effective outing by A.J. Burnett and carried the Yankees to 7-3 victory was witnessed by 48,286 in The Bronx.
“With the knuckleball, you don’t know because it’s so different than anything else,” manager Joe Girardi said following the Yankees’ fourth win in five games.
Nothing about Capuano and his high-80s fastball was different or puzzling. Martin’s two-run homer in the second erased the 2-0 lead the Mets took against Burnett in the first. Teixeira’s two-run, opposite-field blast to right-center — his third in as many games — in the third gave the Yankees a 4-2 advantage. Granderson and Rodriguez went deep with the bases empty in the sixth. With Capuano (3-5) gone, Teixeira added a third RBI with a sacrifice fly in the eighth.
There was a lot more to the victory that pushed the Yankees into first place in the AL East than the muscles that have produced a major league-leading 70 homers.
Burnett rebounded from the first inning and worked 61/3 innings, in which he allowed three runs and three hits, and improved to 5-3 with his first victory since April 30.
David Robertson and Joba Chamberlain, who each worked for a second straight game, provided 12/3 innings of scoreless relief. Robertson was impressive cleaning up the mess left by lefty reliever Boone Logan, who continues to struggle against left-handed hitters.
“He had a hard time getting the breaking ball over all night,” Justin Turner said of Burnett, who limited the Mets to a run in the fifth that cut the lead to 4-3. “He pitched with the fastball and did a good job of getting out of a couple of tough innings.”
Burnett loaded the bases in the first inning without an out and did well to surrender only two runs.
“I don’t think I needed to make adjustments, I made some good pitches,” said Burnett, who used 30 pitches for the first three outs and 35 to get the next nine.
Jose Reyes was the Mets’ offense, getting three of their seven hits and scoring twice.
So much has been made of the Yankees living on the homer. And while small ball is cute and pleases the helpless baseball romantics, power rules.
“Right now it is,” Teixeira said when asked if the longball was the Yankees’ best weapon. “I’d hate for anybody to say, ‘I don’t want to hit home runs anymore.’ “
Watching what Capuano was delivering, how could any Yankee not think of reaching the seats?
“Today was one of those days where you went from being dominated to finally getting a chance to put the ball in play,” said Granderson, who has 15 homers, eight of them off lefties.
Granderson was being kind because the balls the Yankees put in play against Capuano didn’t stay in play.
george.king@nypost.com