The Yankees weren’t the only club working Yankee Stadium yesterday with tombstones in their eye sockets. They were, however, the one that played like they were dead.
The Orioles danced between the rain drops into the wee hours of yesterday morning with the Yankees. But the AL East leaders have much more to play for these days than the morbid Birds, who nest at the bottom of the tree.
With amphetamines barred several years ago, energy drinks and coffee are gulped to provide jolts to tired bodies. So the exhausted Yankees asked A.J. Burnett to put a shot of adrenaline in the river of Red Bull that raced through the clubhouse. Instead, with a brutal second inning, Burnett delivered a case of Quaaludes and was one of two reasons the Orioles hung a 7-3 loss on the Yankees in front of 46,497.
“It was one pitch, it was jut a matter of not making one mistake,” Burnett said of a 1-2 sinker to Brian Roberts that the switch-hitting second baseman punished for a grand slam in a six-run second that obliterated the 1-0 lead Burnett took the mound with. “I wanted to miss in and it came back. I felt good and threw the ball where I wanted for the most part.”
Since Derek Jeter tied Lou Gehrig atop the Yankees’ all-time hit list Wednesday — he passed him Friday night — the Yankees are 0-2. Jeter went 1-for-5 and ended a threat in the seventh by whiffing with runners on first and second. He had one of the four hits allowed by 22-year-old O’s lefty Brian Matusz (5-2), who went seven innings and gave up a run.
Burnett (11-9) and the Yankees were hoping to build off his previous outing when he limited the Rays to a run and four hits in six innings of an 11-1 win. Instead, he allowed six runs and seven hits. Burnett, who will start Game 2 or 3 of the ALDS, is 1-5 with a bloated 6.14 ERA since Aug. 1 in nine starts, and has allowed nine homers in that stretch.
Yet, with the ALDS starting in the first week of next month, Joe Girardi and Burnett aren’t outwardly worried about the No. 2 starter and $82.5 million investment.
“He got balls in the middle of the plate [in the second inning], besides that he threw the ball pretty decent,” Girardi said of Burnett, who also gave up a homer to Nolan Reimold leading off the second and three successive singles in front of Roberts’ 15th homer. “The next five innings he gave up one hit, that’s what he is capable of doing.”
The Yankees weren’t capable of much against Matusz, who made his eighth major league start and first against the Yankees. After giving up a run in the first when Jeter led off with a single, stole second, went to third on a bunt and scored on Mark Teixeira’s fly, the neophyte allowed a walk and a single in the next five innings and didn’t let a runner get past first base.
“He moved balls in and out,” said Jeter, who killed a seventh-inning threat by striking out with runners on first and second. “We hadn’t seen him before and we couldn’t get anything going. He wasn’t falling behind and he was never in trouble.”
A night of rest and having CC Sabathia on the mound today should be enough for the Yankees to avoid the embarrassment of being swept by the Birds.
At least it better be.