KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The blame for this one doesn’t lie with the limp Yankees lineup.
Sure, the beleaguered batters didn’t emerge from a deep funk and score a bevy of runs Saturday night against the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.
Yet the bats battled back from a three-run deficit to tie the score in the sixth, then watched David Phelps give up four runs in the home half of the frame that carried the Royals to an 8-4 victory in front of 26,991.
“They were the two biggest at-bats of the game,’’ Phelps said of walks he issued to Billy Butler and Alex Gordon to start the sixth inning — that were followed by Salvador Perez’s towering home run to left. “We scored three runs and that’s the worst kind of teammate. Nine pitches and I gave it back to them.’’
Because the front-running Blue Jays lost to the Cardinals, the Yankees (31-30) remained six games behind in the AL East. The loss was their sixth in nine games.
While Phelps was annoyed at walking Butler and Gordon, he was stunned that Perez took an 0-1 two-seam fastball off his shoes and hit it out.
“I was looking to get a ground ball double play. It was down and in and I was shocked he hit it like he did,’’ said Phelps (1-4), who hasn’t won since beating the Pirates on May 17. In four games since that victory, Phelps is 0-4 with a 6.57 ERA.
Catcher John Ryan Murphy was as stunned as Phelps over Perez’s homer.
“It was a pretty good pitcher’s pitch,” Murphy said. “To put that swing on that pitch is pretty impressive.”
After Perez’s homer, Lorenzo Cain hit a triple. The Yankees got two outs, keeping Cain at third, but Nori Aoki followed with a single to left to drive in Cain. That made it 7-3 and led to Joe Girardi lifting Phelps.
“I don’t know if he lost his rhythm because of the long top of the sixth, but the two walks really hurt him,’’ Girardi said of Phelps, who allowed seven runs and 10 hits and put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole by giving up three in the second when the Royals collected five hits and went 4-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
With Vidal Nuno and Chase Whitley already in the rotation, Girardi doesn’t have replacement options for Phelps.
Reliever Matt Daley added to the pitching mess by allowing an inherited run to score in the sixth and giving up a home run to Eric Hosmer in the seventh.
The Yankees tied the score, 3-3 with three runs in the sixth off lefty Danny Duffy. Carlos Beltran’s first hit since coming off the disabled list, a double to deep left, scored one run and Yangervis Solarte drove in the other two with a single to right-center.
Derek Jeter started the rally with a ground single to right with one out. A two-out walk to Mark Teixeira kept the threat alive and Beltran’s double to left scored Jeter. Solarte’s two-out single to right-center scored Teixeira and Beltran and tied the score, 3-3.
Again, the bats, which have averaged 2.67 runs in the past nine games, stayed mostly dormant. But when a team that bleeds for every run erases a three-run deficit in the middle innings, it’s up to the pitcher to reward the hitters.
Instead Phelps created a four-run ditch that was far too deep for the Yankees to escape.