Raul Ibanez and Eric Chavez don’t move around quite like they used to. They can’t play every day and aren’t able to do the same things in the field that they have in the past.
But that’s not why the veterans are on the roster.
They are around for nights like last night, when they delivered clutch home runs in a four-run seventh as the Yankees came back to beat the Mets, 4-3, at Citi Field.
Ibanez struck first, after Mark Teixeira led off the inning with a walk and Nick Swisher doubled thanks in part to Lucas Duda’s terrible play in right. That brought up Ibanez, who turned on a Chris Young pitch and sent a line drive over the right-field wall to tie the game.
“[Young] was pitching well,” Ibanez said. “He was using his fastball, a sneaky fastball. You look up [at the scoreboard] and it’s 84-85 [mph], but it seems a lot harder than that.”
It was hard enough to keep the Yankees off the scoreboard for six innings.
“Chris was dominating us the whole day,” Chavez said. “Raul’s homer got us into the game.”
And very quickly, it was tied.
“We didn’t want to lose again,” Ibanez said of the Yankees, who had lost three straight. “Not after we just won 10 in a row.”
Two batters later, Chavez gave the Yankees the lead with the first pinch-hit homer of his career.
“It was my first at bat at this stadium,” Chavez said. “I was just trying to get used to seeing ball.”
Down 0-2 against Jon Rauch, he lowered his expectations even more.
“I felt like I had no shot at the first two pitches,” Chavez said. “I was just trying to protect the plate.”
He sent a fly ball the other way that managed to get out.
“More than anything, I thought it would go foul,” Chavez said. “It stayed fair, but I didn’t know if it would have the distance.”
The bullpen made the lead hold up.
“That was the inning for us to get back in it and we took advantage of it,” Chavez said. “The one thing we have is the players to do it.”
That’s something manager Joe Girardi knows, even as his team struggles with runners in scoring position.
“I was just trying to get the lead,” the manager said of his decision to pinch-hit Chavez. “They’re in scoring position when they’re on first and there’s a hitter up. That’s who we are. I can’t make them run faster, but they hit the ball out of the ballpark and we win games.”
dan.martin@nypost.com