MLB

Yankees offense — not Robertson — gets the save for once

David Robertson had it plotted in his mind. He would come in out of the Yankees bullpen in the ninth inning, slip a first-pitch breaking ball past the White Sox’s Avisail Garcia to get ahead and then complete the save.

Well, plan and execution weren’t quite on the same page.

“It’s obviously a pitch I want back,” Robertson said of the ball Garcia deposited just over the wall in right to end the closer’s run of 22 straight converted saves. “I tried to throw a curveball for a strike. I didn’t mean to hang it as bad as I did. I didn’t see that outcome coming.”

Not many did.

But just as Robertson so many times preserved the Yankees’ bacon, his teammates made it just a hiccup, not a catastrophe. After the White Sox tied it 4-4 in the ninth, the Yankees rode Brian McCann’s three-run, 10th-inning. pinch-hit homer to a 7-4 victory Sunday.

So just turn the page and hit the road.

“It’s easy to shake that one off when you win a ball game,” said Robertson, whose blown save was the biggest negative in an otherwise terrific bullpen effort by the Yankees: four innings three hits, one run, no walks, five strikeouts.

In the three-game sweep of the White Sox, Yankees relievers pitched 11 innings, surrendering seven hits, two runs and two walks while striking out nine.

“It’s frustrating because I really wanted to help us out at the end of the game,” Robertson said. “But it all worked out.”

Yeah, at the end of the season no one is going to look at the Yankees’ record and say, “Hey, scratch that Aug. 24 win because Robertson blew a save …”

Robertson’s last blown save had been June 1. His run of 22 in a row started June 5 and representing the second-longest streak in baseball, behind Huston Street’s 23 consecutive saves.

So it’s not as if manager Joe Girardi is fretting. We’re talking one pitch, one mistake to the right-field porch.

“He’s been so good. So good,” Girardi said. “He left a curveball up and that’s the benefit of playing in our ballpark and it also hurts sometimes when you play in our ballpark. Most ballparks that’s not a home run but it was. One pitch.”

Girardi discounted the notion that Robertson going three straight games contributed to the hiccup.

“If he tells me he’s OK, I’m going to use him,” Girardi said. “As you get later in the season — Robbie’s done it before — you do it a little bit.”

“I threw one pitch I wanted back,” Robertson said. “First pitch I came in, I grooved. It happens.

“These guys are good. They’re not paid to hit ground balls and pop up. They’re paid to put them in the seats.”