ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — This is how these things happen when the road has gone muddy and the cards have grown cold. Winning teams on hot streaks are almost charmed by the process of the nine-inning challenge, figuring out a different way to win today than they did yesterday.
The losing streak is something else altogether: Each inning presents a hazard. What can go wrong now? Who’ll be the culprit? The pitchers? The hitters? The fielders? All of the above?
“I know what my job is on a night like this,” A.J. Burnett said. “I know I have to pitch us through this.”
For five innings, he did. For five innings, save for one bad pitch to Johnny Damon, Burnett was every inch the stopper the Yankees needed him to be, blowing through the Rays’ lineup, allowing his teammates to fortify him with a 5-1 lead, cruising toward throwing a critical road block at the base of the slippery slope the Yankees have created lately.
“And then . . .”
He shook his head. He shrugged his shoulders. His mind filled with images of the sixth inning, the nightmare-from-hell inning that is a hallmark of every losing streak that every baseball team endures. An unexpected, two-run home run from Sam Fuld — he of the two lifetime home runs heading into that at-bat. An RBI single by Matt Joyce, helped along by a wild pitch.
And then an at-bat by B.J. Upton that underlines and exemplifies all that goes wrong when things are going south, for a pitcher, in a game, for a team. Burnett had handled Upton twice already; he is the kind of free-swinging righty hitter against whom Burnett has made his living his entire career. Two outs, man on, two strikes on him.
Burnett: “I have him set up. I have to put him away.”
Manager Joe Girardi: “That’s his guy. I have every confidence he gets out of that inning.”
Catcher Russell Martin: “I call a curve there because he’s got a great curveball all night.”
Just not this time. Just not this curve. Upton recognized it immediately, all but licked his lips as it fell sweetly into the hitting zone. And crushed it. There were 25,024 people inside Tropicana Field, and for most of the night it was hard to gauge their affiliation, they cheered when the Rays did something good and when the Yankees did, too.
But as the ball flew over the fence, the roar was clear and it was unambiguous. This was a Rays house, if for no other reason than everyone loves a winner, everyone loves a front-runner. Upton’s blast made the score 6-5 and it would end that way. The lead for the Rays in the AL East would grow to three. The Yankees’ losing streak would swell to six.
And the time is rapidly approaching when dismissing this rancid stretch of ball as the product of a “small sample size” will no longer be allowed. Yes, it’s still May. You can’t clinch anything in May.
But you can sure make things hard on yourself.
The Yankees saw the Red Sox do that, burying themselves in a 2-10 start. They saw the Rays do that to themselves, jammed up by a 1-8 start. The Sox recovered. The Rays have soared. They are good teams with winning DNA. They figured it out.
Now it’s the Yankees’ turn to test the theorem that you’re never quite as wonderful as you look when times are good — and it wasn’t that long ago that the Yankees were eight games over .500 — and that you’re never quite as terrible as you look when times are bad.
And times are bad now. Burnett came up small. Alex Rodriguez continued to look like he’s lost in a fog, striking out three times in an 0-for-4 that matched Mark Teixeira’s 0-for-4 and book-ended Derek Jeter’s 0-for-3. Even on a night when the Yankees score five runs, there is cause for concern for an offense that is starting to look like Curtis Granderson & Friends.
It’s why they could’ve used a different-looking sixth inning last night, unless you remember what a losing streak looks like, and feels like. Impediments aplenty. Obstacles galore. Waiting for you until you figure them out. Which the Yankees will do. Eventually.
Just not yet.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com