PITTSBURGH – After watching the Yankees waste multiple scoring chances, the Pirates spank his pitchers and the fielders not make plays, manager Joe Girardi told his players what he thought of last night’s debacle.
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Following a 12-5 drubbing that was witnessed by 38,867 at PNC Park, Girardi stopped in the clubhouse and delivered the same message he would give to the media shortly afterward.
“We stunk,” Girardi told his putrid players.
Nobody argued.
“I don’t think he needed to express that,” said Alex Rodriguez, who went 0-for-5 and hitless in two at-bats with runners in scoring position. “We all were upset.”
If you draw a paycheck from the Yankees and watched last night’s debacle and weren’t sick, you need another job.
Darrell Rasner, LaTroy Hawkins and Edwar Ramirez gave up 19 hits and 12 runs and were the main reason the 41-36 Yankees dropped their third game in four against sub-.500 teams from the NL Central.
Yet, the chuckers weren’t the only culprits.
Pirate starter Tom Gorzelanny gave up six hits, walked five and hit a batter in six innings but surrendered only three runs.
“We didn’t knock him out when we had a chance to,” said Derek Jeter, who extended his hitting streak to 12 games with a seventh-inning double. “We couldn’t have one big inning.”
Girardi has been on the job for three months and might be the most positive of the 30 big-league managers. Last night, however, he put the hosannas on hold.
“We had a lot of chances and didn’t take advantage of them and that’s what kills you,” Girardi said of his lineup that continued a disappointing trend of not hitting in the clutch by going 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position.
In the past five games the Yankees are batting .178 (8-for-45) with runners in scoring position. “We had a ton of opportunities and when we didn’t score they scored.”
Asked what area irked him the most, Girardi didn’t hesitate.
“The whole game bothered me, we stunk, we stunk,” Girardi said. “We keep putting [runners] out there. We have to turn it around because we are missing opportunities. We had a lot of opportunities. The defense didn’t help us, the pitching didn’t help us and the runners in scoring position …”
Rasner, who is 4-5 overall and 1-5 in his last six starts, gave up seven runs and 10 hits in five innings.
“The whole thing was location tonight,” said Rasner, who gave up two runs in the first, one in the third, two in the fourth when Jose Bautista homered and two in the fifth when Ryan Doumit homered.
“Balls kept coming back to the middle of the plate. I need to make better pitches. I didn’t make the pitches I needed to make, everything was up and they hit the ball hard.”
Rodriguez explained the difference between dropping two of three to the Reds when the Yankees scored six runs in three games and were blanked in the middle tilt and what happened last night.
“Cincinnati did a great job of throwing the ball, they threw the [heck] out of the ball,” Rodriguez said.
“Tonight we had opportunities to do some damage, we had an opportunity to get the pitcher and we let them get away.”
When Girardi’s “We stunk” was delivered to Jeter, the captain didn’t disagree.
“What other adjective can you use?” Jeter said. “We didn’t play well.”
And were rightfully reminded of it shortly after the nightmare ended.