Joba Chamberlain felt the positive was how he finished, not how he started the eighth inning yesterday.
But he was one base-runner from not finishing the inning at all.
Yankee manager Joe Girardi, after watching Chamberlain surrender a walk and then a Scott Podsednik home run to turn a comfortable 7-3 Yankees lead into a 7-5 fret, admitted he was ready to go to David Robertson.
“I was prepared to bring him in if Joba gave up another base-runner,” Girardi said.
The crowd seemed ready to make the move for Girardi. What remained of the 47,890 gathering that was considerably reduced by a 2:32 rain delay was in an ugly, booing mood.
“It won’t be the first and it won’t be the last,” said Chamberlain, who righted himself and then went 1-2-3 after the two-run shot before the Yankees punished the Royal bullpen in the home half en route to a 12-6 victory in The Bronx.
So Chamberlain stressed the positive — zipping through three hitters — over the negative, which was his fifth straight struggling outing, a performance that hiked his ERA to 5.95.
In his last five games, totaling six innings, Chamberlain has surrendered 12 hits, eight earned runs and four walks.
In his last 15 appearances dating to June 13, he has had only one clean outing in which he didn’t allow a hit or walk.
“It was limit the damage,” Chamberlain said of his latest effort.
“The other times when we gave up big runs, it’s been big. So to go back and get them 1-2-3 after that [home run] was good. We thought coming in it was a good situation [up 7-3]. But the big thing was just getting them 1-2-3 out there.”
Girardi has stood by his eighth-inning bridge to Mariano Rivera in all instances, but this time readied the hook.
“He wasn’t sharp with the first couple of hitters,” Girardi acknowledged, “and when you come out of the bullpen, you need to be sharp or you get yourself in trouble.
“He seemed to get it back, which is a good thing. We want our guys to come out of the bullpen sharp. Sometimes it happens. Today it wasn’t. . . .
“We have seen days like that, and it becomes bigger, but today it didn’t.”
So with the crowd wet and ornery, Chamberlain, who has allowed multiple base-runners in five straight outings — none more than 1 2/3 innings — restored calm with a ground out, strikeout and fly to left.
“I felt fine,” he insisted. “It wasn’t that I felt bad or anything. It was just that we didn’t get the fastball in as far as we wanted to [against Podsednik]
“It’s a game. But I understand I have to be better and I have to get better. But you have to keep it in perspective. I have to go out and be better. There’s no getting around it.”