CHICAGO — Well, David Robertson was waiting for us media folk as we entered the Yankees’ clubhouse late Friday night. He knew he needed to address his first blown save since he became the team’s official closer, after he surrendered a walk-off homer to Adam Dunn to leave the Yankees 6-5 losers to the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field.
We expected nothing less. Robertson learned from the best.
No, if your primary, current concern as a Yankees fan is Robertson is “no Mariano Rivera,” then you are dramatically misguided. For Robertson’s foul-up prevented the Yankees from completing a tight victory that would have covered up myriad blemishes.
At an ordinary 24-23, and off to a 1-3 start in their one-hotel, two-stadium tour of Chicago and its subpar baseball teams, manager Joe Girardi’s group looks nowadays like the most disheveled guests we have seen since a bathrobe-clad Will Ferrell staggered around a children’s birthday party in “Old School.”
Robertson absolutely earned a bad night after saving his first nine opportunities as Rivera’s successor. The same can’t necessarily be said about Kelly Johnson or Hiroki Kuroda, or the Yankees’ lineup that surged and then sputtered against their old pal Hector Noesi.
Johnson started at first base, allowing Girardi to give Mark Teixeira a half-shift at designated hitter, and committed one error along with two other misplays. Though Kuroda deserved better defense from his first baseman, he continued his season-long-plus saga of simply not delivering enough quality pitches to prevail.
“I thought I was not sharp today,” Kuroda, who lasted just 4²/₃ innings while allowing four runs (two earned), said through his interpreter.
The Yankees need a real backup first baseman. And they need Kuroda, the major leagues’ third-oldest starting pitcher at 39 (behind the Mets’ Bartolo Colon, 41 on Saturday, and former Met R.A. Dickey, an older 39), to discover a fountain of relative youth.
Handed a 3-0 lead on Brian McCann’s first-inning, three-run homer, Kuroda couldn’t hold the sort of advantage he would have regarded as comfortable a year ago. Alexei Ramirez slammed a fifth-inning, two-run homer to put the White Sox up, 4-3, and one batter later, Kuroda departed. He now owns an ugly 4.55 ERA.
The Yankees rallied in the seventh with two runs, thanks in large part to some wildness by White Sox rookie reliever Jake Petricka (he walked the pop-less Derek Jeter on four pitches and unfurled a wild pitch to allow the tying run to score). Yet that wound up merely setting the stage for Dunn’s monster, game-winning blast to right-center field — with Dayan Viciedo having reached on a single — on an 0-and-2 cutter by Robertson.
Johnson has been marginalized from his originally envisioned role of utility infielder, thanks to Yangervis Solarte’s shockingly strong performance at the hot corner. The 26-year-old rookie has been a revelation, so much so that Johnson professed in a pregame interview to bear no ill will about the situation.
Solarte, Johnson said, is “one of the easiest players ever to root for. He’s not just doing well. He’s doing excellent.”
Before this year, Johnson played a total of five major-league games at first base — two starts and three mid-game appearances. So it’s no wonder the 32-year-old, primarily a second baseman, doesn’t look comfortable at first.
In the first inning, Johnson couldn’t catch a solid Solarte relay on a two-out two-hopper by Viciedo, and as the ball got behind him, White Sox leadoff hitter Adam Eaton scored all the way from second base. In the third, Johnson somehow let a Conor Gillaspie soft grounder get past him, hit the first-base bag and hit first-base umpire Jeff Nelson before ricocheting back into fair territory. Kuroda managed to prevent the home team from scoring, although not before loading the bases and surviving Dunn’s two-out flyout to the center-field warning track.
And in the fourth, Roberts barehanded an Eaton dribbler and threw low to first. While the error rightly went to Roberts, Johnson couldn’t keep the ball from entering the Yankees’ dugout, allowing Alejandro De Aza to score from second base.
Girardi said afterward he would continue to start Johnson occasionally at first.
“He’s a guy that can handle that position, I believe,” the manager said. “Tonight was a tough night.”
The Yankees have problems to solve. Robertson represents the least of them.