CHICAGO — As hard as he has worked during the games this week in his home state, Joe Girardi might have exerted double the energy before and after Saturday’s roller coaster to assure us, in every which way but Pig Latin, he held no concerns, anxieties, reservations or qualms about David Robertson.
“I expect our relievers to be really good, but I don’t expect them to be perfect,” the Yankees’ manager filibustered after his team squeaked past the White Sox, 4-3, at U.S. Cellular Field. “And I know at times they’re going to make a good pitch and get beat, and at times they’re going to make a bad pitch and get away with it.”
Whatever. The truth came out in the “Woo!” exhaled by Mariano Rivera’s successor some 20 minutes after he passed an important test: He responded to his first blown save with a save, and a well-pitched one, at that. Hence the Yankees can rest easy about Robertson, and they even can think about leaving Chicago with a 3-3 record on their one-hotel, two-ballpark trip if Masahiro Tanaka prevails on Sunday. By lifting their record to 25-23, they avoided falling back to .500.
“[Friday] night was a tough one,” Robertson said, who picked up his 10th save. “The team battled really hard. We got the lead and I wasn’t able to nail it down.
“We did the same thing today, and I was not going to let them down today”
Friday’s blown save, following nine consecutive conversions, came quickly in the form of a Dayan Viciedo leadoff single and Adam Dunn mammoth home run in the ninth inning, turning a 5-4 Yankees lead into a walk-off 6-5 loss. For most of Saturday, it appeared Robertson wouldn’t receive an immediate chance for redemption, as the Yankees’ offense put up eight straight zeroes against White Sox starter John Danks.
Then came a game-tying, three-run rally against closer Ronald Belisario, with four straight Yankees reaching base after two outs went on the board. And with two outs in the top of the 10th, Jacoby Ellsbury — whose one-out, ninth-inning single initiated that rally — crushed his second homer of the season, to right field, against Chisox reliever Zach Putnam to break a 3-3 tie.
Enter Robertson, who pitched aggressively and accurately. He struck out pinch hitter Alejandro De Aza on three strikes. He fanned Leury Garcia on six pitches. He gave up a single to leadoff hitter Adam Eaton, who stole second as Gordon Beckham — with three singles and a sacrifice bunt on the day — started off 2-and-0.
“I knew I had to make quality pitches from there on,” said Robertson, who admitted he felt a little nervous at that juncture.
Five pitches later, Robertson threw a cutter home plate umpire Jeff Nelson called for strike three. Beckham didn’t argue, Robertson pumped his fist and the Yankees ended a two-game slide.
“He had as good stuff today as he’s had all year,” said Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild, who said he checked in with Robertson both Friday night and Saturday morning. “Sometimes when you talk too much, it becomes a different situation. We just talked in general.”
“I’ve seen Robbie come back too many times after from giving up a run that was costly in a game to believe that he wouldn’t come back,” Girardi said.
It’s OK to acknowledge concern. Robertson did, a little bit. Of course, by rebounding with such authority, Robertson showed the Yankees possess far greater areas of concern than him.
For the season, the Yankees were tied (with the Twins) for seventh in the American League with 204 runs scored entering Saturday’s late action, and even that doesn’t tell the whole story of their futility. As William Juliano pointed out on “The Captain’s Blog,” one of the best Yankees blogs I’ve seen, the Yankees have scored four runs or fewer in 30 of their 48 games, or 62.5 percent — a rate that ranks among the worst in the franchise’s history. These Yankees consistently do not give their pitchers sufficient room for error, and that includes Vidal Nuno’s no-decision Saturday, in which he worked past a three-run White Sox first to hang around for a career-best seven innings.
For a day, that issue could be tabled. And so, absolutely, can the worries whether Robertson can work through bad days on the job.