DETROIT — Jorge Posada’s bat shows signs of healing and Robinson Cano’s bruised left hand was well enough for him to play.
Nevertheless, each of their brains froze and contributed heavily to a hard-to-stomach 4-2 Yankees loss to the Tigers last night in front of 23,551 at Comerica Park.
Posada and Cano committed costly baserunning mistakes in the sixth inning with the Yankees trailing by three on a night when CC Sabathia wasn’t sharp.
On first base with one out, Cano saw the ball skip away from catcher Alex Avila and broke for second, but Cano stopped halfway and was caught in a 2-6-3-4 run down for the second out.
“I shouldn’t have stopped; [the ball] was too close to [Avila],” said Cano, who went 0-for-4 after missing Monday night’s game. “I should have kept going. Mistakes you learn from them and don’t let it happen again.”
Posada followed with his second single but with the count, 1-2, the heavy-legged DH thought Brad Penny not paying attention to him and started toward second. Penny stepped off and threw to second baseman Scott Sizemore for the easy out.
“They weren’t paying attention to me,” Posada said. “He was taking a little longer to the plate and I thought I could sneak in there. I messed up, I completely messed up.”
Manager Joe Girardi also watched Andruw Jones get cut down at the plate to end the fourth inning on Brett Gardner’s fly to medium right, but the manager wasn’t anywhere near as upset at that aggressive send by third base coach Rob Thomson as he was with Cano and Posada’s mistakes.
“It can’t happen,” Girardi said of Posada. “You can’t go there. I talked to him about it and I will leave it at that.”
On a night when Sabathia struggled and the Yankees didn’t take advantage against Penny, making three outs on the basepaths for the second straight game hurt.
“My fastball location wasn’t there and the change-up was flat and straight,” said Sabathia, who fell to 2-2 by allowing four runs, 10 hits and three walks (one intentional) in seven innings. “My very first fastball cut back over the plate to Austin Jackson and he hit it for a double down the line. I wanted to keep it close enough for us to have a chance to win with the offense we have.”
In Sabathia’s previous two starts the Yankees scored 15 and 12 runs. But against Penny, who they punished for eight runs in 4 1/3 innings on April 2 in The Bronx, they didn’t do nearly enough. Penny (2-3) allowed an unearned run and six hits in six innings.
“We had opportunities in the first four or five innings,” said Girardi, whose hitters stranded two in the first, two in the second, one in the fourth and went 1-for-5 with runners in scoring position across the first four frames. “That was the difference.”
Mark Teixeira’s eighth homer — a solo, one-out blast to left — cut the deficit to 4-2. A one-out walk drawn by pinch-hitter Nick Swisher gave the Yankees life in the ninth but Jose Valverde, who threw 35 pitches Monday night, fed Russell Martin a 4-6-3 double play that ended a seven-game losing streak for the Tigers and a three-game winning stretch for the Yankees.
Two bad baserunning decisions. A runner thrown out at home. A pedestrian outing by the ace. And a lineup that couldn’t figure out Penny.
“You don’t like them but you know during the course of the season they are going to happen sometimes,” Girardi said of the ugly defeat. “You still don’t like them, mental errors. It’s going to happen, you understand that but you don’t like it.”