MILWAUKEE — Having flushed an early three-run lead, the Yankees were a strike away from defeat when Mark Teixeira homered off Francisco Rodriguez in the ninth inning Sunday.
As Teixeira lugged his tired legs around the bases with the score tied, the Yankees knew they had been given a second chance.
Minutes later, they watched Mark Reynolds rifle a bottom-of-the-ninth single between third and short that scored Rickie Weeks with the game-winning run from third to give the Brewers a 6-5 victory in front of 43,544 at Miller Field.
“Rickie Weeks hits a broken-bat, off-the-end, down-the-line double and we said, ‘Oh, oh,’ this could turn quickly,’’ Teixeira said of Weeks’ one-out double off Adam Warren, who wild-pitched Weeks to third before fanning Lyle Overbay in front of hanging an 0-2 breaking ball to Reynolds, who was briefly a Yankee last season.
After winning the last two games in Anaheim and the first one Friday night against the Brewers, the Yankees had a chance to go home with a winning record on the six-game trip if they split the weekend games.
Instead, they lost 5-4 Saturday night and wasted a 3-0 first-inning lead against Matt Garza.
“We lost two tough games here,’’ said Joe Girardi, whose team stuffed a 3-3 ledger into the bat bags for the flight home, where they host the Mets on Monday at Yankee Stadium in the first of four Subway Series games.
Kelly Johnson had a two-run double and Yangervis Solarte added a sacrifice fly in the first against Garza, but David Phelps gave two back in the third, and the two runners he left for Matt Thornton in the sixth scored against the lefty reliever and Dellin Betances.
In his second start of the season, Phelps allowed the leadoff runner to get on base in five of the six innings he was on the mound.
“It’s almost embarrassing,’’ Phelps said of letting the first hitters reach base. “I was pitching out of the stretch in the first five or six pitches every inning.’’
Trailing 5-3, in the seventh, Solarte’s two-out single scored Teixeira from second to cut the deficit to a run. John Ryan Murphy’s third single started the eighth, but pinch-hitter Brian Roberts banged into a double play.
Rodriguez, who was 15-for-15 in save chances and hadn’t given up a run this season in 19 games, retired Derek Jeter and Jacoby Ellsbury to start the ninth. At 3-2, the former Mets closer chose the changeup to Teixeira.
“I was looking to drive the ball,’’ Teixeira said. “He threw a lot of good pitches and I kept battling. I was sitting on the change and hit it good.’’
Warren looked good in the eighth, when he fanned two and stranded a runner. And until Reynolds’ hit, the right-hander wasn’t at fault because Weeks’ double was cheap and the wild pitch not fatal because Weeks was already in scoring position.
Yet, the 0-2 pitch to Reynolds was bad.
“I wanted it down in the dirt,’’ Warren said of the fateful pitch. “It was a decent pitch, but at 0-2 I got to bury it more.”
With Solarte and Jeter spaced about 15-feet apart, Reynolds’ smash found the hole and buried the Yankees.