The LoHud Yankees Blog

Royce Ring was home in San Diego. He was taking his six-month-old baby girl — the one who was born during spring training — to a routine checkup on Tuesday when he got a call from his agent. The Yankees had tried to get in touch with Ring, and he hadn’t answered.

Four days earlier, Ring had wrapped up one of the finest minor league seasons of his career, but he’d given up the idea of joining the Yankees when a second round of September call-ups came and went. Ring told himself that his .202 opponents batting average against lefties would at least help him earn a good job for next year.

Brian Cashman told him he wasn’t finished with this year just yet.

“He said, ‘What time do you want to leave tomorrow?’” Ring said. “I said, ‘As early as you can get me out.’”

That meant a 6:20 flight to Atlanta, a connection to Tampa and a chance to play a role well into October.

Last year the Yankees had Damaso Marte and Phil Coke in the playoffs. Marte was positively dominant as their late-innings left-handed reliever, and Coke was good through the first two rounds.

This year, the Yankees have learned to lean on Boone Logan, but Ring has a little more than two weeks to make them think about carrying a second lefty in the playoffs. He could easily be more valuable than an extra position player or extra long reliever, but that’s assuming he passes what seems to be a down-the-stretch audition.

As the Yankees saw this week, Tampa Bay is willing to put three straight lefties in their lineup against a right-handed starter (though they’re also willing to pinch hit Sean Rodriguez or Willy Aybar if a lefty comes in from the pen). The Rangers have Josh Hamilton, Julio Borbon, David Murphy and Mitch Moreland getting regular playing time from the left side, and the Twins have Denard Span, Jason Kubel, Jim Thome, Joe Mauer and possibly Justin Morneau. Twins second baseman Orlando Hudson is generally worse against lefties than righties.

“It’s an awesome opportunity for me,” Ring said. “I’m hoping to make the most of it and help them out. Obviously they’re pushing for the playoffs, and if I can help them out in any way, that’s what I’m going to try to do.”

Photo of Ring from my friends at the Scranton Times-Tribune

I was surprised to learn today that Derek Jeter, in fact, sold his soul last night. He threw sportsmanship out the window, sullied his good name and became a disgraced member of the Yankees organization when he accepted a bad call, took a base he didn’t deserve and scored a dishonest run.

I was surprised to learn these things, because Jeter was playing a baseball game at the time of his transgression.

In baseball, catchers snag outside pitches, scoot the glove toward the plate and sell ball four as strike three. It’s considered a skill. Hitters take borderline pitches and immediately sprint out of the box as if there should be no question that the pitch was out of the zone. Outfielders make diving attempts on shallow fly balls and immediately hold up the ball. How could that ball have hit the ground if it’s currently wrapped tightly in a glove?

“I’m not going to tell them I’m not going to go to first,” Jeter said. “I’ve been hit before and they said I wasn’t hit. My job is to get on base.”

Baseball is an imperfect game. Umpires make the calls, and players do whatever they can to make those calls go their way. Was Jeter over the top last night? Maybe, but consider the situation:

He squared to bunt. A first-pitch fastball came in so close to his hands that it hit the very bat Jeter was holding. Spinning out of the way and reaching for his left arm wasn’t so much acting as it was reacting. Joe Girardi and Gene Monahan came running out of the Yankees dugout, not as the second act of a well-planned performance, but to make sure their shortstop wasn’t hurt. By the time player, manager and trainer converged, the call was made and it was time for the hard sell.

The alternative is far more laughable than Jeter’s theatrics. Is there any player in baseball who should be expected to correct an umpire who’s on the verge of giving him the benefit of a bad call? Should Girardi, as the manager of a team trailing by one run, have requested a different ruling? Should Monahan have explained that, in his medical opinion, Jeter’s at-bat should continue?

Even Rays manager Joe Maddon admitted he had no problem with the Yankees handling of the situation. Maddon’s problem was with the umpires who should have realized the ball hit the bat, not Jeter’s hand or arm or wrist or whatever body part he was vaguely grabbing. The umps might have realized the truth if not for Jeter’s reaction.

In that moment, Jeter, Girardi and Monahan were all catchers framing pitches. They were hitters taking ball four and fielders making shoestring catches. The play was over. All that remained was the convincing. It’s not about morality or ethics. It’s not even about sportsmanship. It’s about gamesmanship. If the Yankees and Rays were playing in a sandlot with no umpires, calling their own balls and strikes, then maybe there would have been a sportsmanship issue at play, but Jeter was playing in a Major League Baseball game last night. He was at work and he did his job.

I have no way of knowing, of course, but I suspect his soul is both intact and all his own.

More good than bad came out of Phil Hughes last night.

“It definitely could have been worse, but the only goal you have here is to win,” he said. “On a positive note, I feel like my stuff was good and I made some pretty good pitches for the most part, so I can carry that over to my next one.”

There will be a next one, and it will almost certainly come against this same Tampa Bay lineup. For a while last night Hughes looked as crisp as he’d looked all season, but the home run pitches brought back old concerns about finishing hitters and finishing innings.

“I think that’s all part of the learning process, learning to close out innings,” Joe Girardi said. “… He’ll bounce back. It’s tough. It’s an important game and he pitched extremely well, and you make a few mistakes and get beat. We understand that’s part of the game, and I liked the way he pitched.”

The past two times Hughes pitched on extended rest, he struggled to regain his form. He skipped a start in late June, pitched on nine-days rest and allowed seven runs to the weak-hitting Mariners. The all-star break left him with 10 days off between starts, and in his first game back he allowed nine hits and six runs.

This time, the Yankees let Hughes pitch one inning out of the bullpen between starts. The hope was that live hitters would keep him sharp during his time off. It seemed to work. On nine-days rest, Hughes was perfect through four innings, and he was two pitches away from a great outing.

“I threw my fastball or strikes early,” he said. “Got my breaking ball over when I needed it. Threw probably more changeups than I thrown this year. I was kind of just pitching. They were swinging early and I was able to kind of get through those first few innings pretty easily.”

Here’s Hughes after last night’s game.

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It was Alex Rodriguez, in the minutes after Tuesday night’s win, who seemed to see this road trip for what it was.

“We’ve been in some dogfights the past four or five days and come up on the short end,” he said. “I think the long and short is, it’s hard to go 162 games and not run into a wall. We’d been able to avoid that all year until now.”

He was right. And he’s still right. There’s a reason every other team in baseball had already lost four in a row before the Yankees finally did it. That sort of losing streak isn’t abnormal. It’s certainly not abnormal when two corner outfielders are hurt, an all-star pitcher is hurt and the schedule calls for six straight road games against good teams like Texas and Tampa Bay.

There’s no way to sugar coat what’s happened to the Yankees. They’ve fallen apart in a lot of ways these past 10 games. They’re two home runs away from a 10-game losing streak that would have left even the brightest optimist seeing bits of falling sky. The Yankees have hit a wall. It happens. What matters is getting around the wall and finding something better on the other side.

“We’ve lasted a long time, to the middle of September to run into that (wall),” Rodriguez said last night. “Hopefully we get that behind us, and we know exactly what we’re capable of doing. One quality hit, one big hit, things would be different.”

Today is an off day. This weekend is a three-game series in Baltimore where Brett Gardner should be back, Andy Pettitte should be back on Sunday and Nick Swisher might be back. Then its four more big games against Tampa Bay. And then Boston.

Hitting a wall isn’t unusual. The trick is getting to the other side.

Here’s A-Rod from last night.

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For the Yankees, the themes felt familiar tonight. Another one run game decided by which team could get the big hit. Another series of wasted scoring opportunities in the early innings that loomed large in the end. Another strong pitching performance wasted on a couple of bad pitches at a bad time.

“I don’t think we played poorly, it was just those close games,” Derek Jeter said. “Hopefully we find ways to get it done. I don’t think it’s that we’re playing bad.”

The bottom line is that the Yankees have lost five of six on the road, and they’re two late-inning home runs away from a 10-game losing streak. Most of the loses have felt a lot like this one.

The Yankees had the bases loaded with one out in the first inning, and settled for only one run. They stranded five runners in the next five innings. “You had a feeling that would come back to haunt us right there,” Alex Rodriguez said.

The Yankees had Phil Hughes mixing pitches and throwing strikes, but he made two mistakes that Dan Johnson hit for two-run home runs. “I yanked a fastball down and in both times,” Hughes said. “For the most part I executed my pitches to the other guys, and he was the one that I didn’t.”

It all felt familiar. It felt like the 32 stranded base runners on Friday and Saturday. It felt like Sergio Mitre making the mistake to Reid Brignac on Monday. It felt like Ivan Nova cruising and then falling apart on Tuesday.

“We could very easily have won five of these games,” Joe Girardi said. “Sometimes you get the big hit and sometimes you don’t, and we didn’t seem to get the big hit. I thought we played fairly well, even thought we lost five of six. It sounds kind of funny, but we had a chance to win five of six too.”

Here’s Jeter’s postgame. He starts by talking about the state of the team, then goes into the hit-by-pitch that never happened.

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• The two home run pitches seemed to be the exact same. They weren’t supposed to be. The first was supposed to be a fastball up and in, the second a fastball down and away. “Just try to execute a pitch and it didn’t go where I wanted it to,” Hughes said.

• Hughes has talked about throwing his fastball too often, but this time he wasn’t second guessing himself after the home runs. He said the problem was location, not pitch selection. “He was mixing his pitches extremely well,” Girardi said. “I thought he threw more changeups tonight than he threw all year. I thought he mixed his pitches extremely well, but you can’t throw offspeed all the time.”

• Girardi said he never thought about taking Hughes out against Joyce or Johnson in the seventh inning. “His pitch count was low,” Girardi said. “He got two quick outs (against) two pretty good hitters that he got out. It wasn’t a thought of mine.” Girardi started the inning planning to let Hughes pitch through Carlos Pena.

• Girardi said he was legitimately worried about Jeter when he came running out of the dugout after the hit by pitch. Girardi thought it got him on the hand. Asked what he thought of Jeter’s free pass, Girardi said. “It’s your job to get on base any way you can.”

• The Yankees seem to have missed Brett Gardner and Nick Swisher here in Tampa Bay. “Those are two guys that are experienced in our lineup that we don’t have,” Girardi said. “Our lineup looks a little bit different with those two in there. We didn’t have them, and you have to find a way to overcome that.”

• Joe Maddon on his ejection: “I was just trying to present logic because none of them could tell me that they knew the ball had hit his hand, but everybody could have told me that the ball did hit the bat. So for me, it was a ground ball back to the pitcher. I thought that was pretty obvious.”

• Maddon on Jeter: “If our guys did it, I would have applauded that too. It’s a great performance on his part. It’s ust a matter of it’s very unfortunate in that moment.”

• All three games this series were decided by one run.

• On his home run, Curtis Granderson scored the 500th run of his career.

• Forgot to mention this pregame, but when Girardi was asked whether Royce Ring would be the last of the September call-ups, he hesitated. Then he said, “Don’t write that.” Sounds like there’s a good chance someone else will be here eventually. Andrew Brackman?

Associated Press photos of the Yankees bench, Rodriguez and Robinson Cano

Derek Jeter didn’t play coy after the game. He was asked what that ball hit in the seventh inning, and Jeter answered as simply as possible.

“The bat,” he said.

Jeter showed bunt and tried to spin out of the way when the pitch came inside. The ball made contact, the bat went flying and Jeter grabbed his left arm. Joe Girardi and Gene Monahan came sprinting out of the dugout. Jeter remembered the on-field conversation being pretty simple. Girardi asked Jeter if he was OK, and Jeter said yes. From there, it was all about selling the bit.

“Geno did more acting than I did,” Jeter said.

When Curtis Granderson followed with a two-run home run to put the Yankees in the lead, Jeter’s bit of acting seemed to be the most pivotal moment of the game. It stayed that way until Dan Johnson’s second home run.

“It’s part of the game,” Jeter said. “I’ve been hit before and they said I wasn’t hit. My job is to get on base.”

Rays designated hitter Dan Johnson does two things well: He works the count and he hits for power. Tonight, Johnson took advantage of two fastball counts and hit a pair of home runs, carrying the Rays to a 4-3 win that dumped the Yankees back into second place in the American League East. Phil Hughes pitched well most of the night, but mistakes to Johnson cost him in the Yankees latest tough-to-swallow loss of the road trip.

Associated Press photo of Hughes and Johnson

YANKEES (88-57)
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Lance Berkman DH
Jorge Posada C
Austin Kearns LF
Colin Curtis RF

RHP Phil Hughes (16-7, 4.26)
Hughes vs. Rays

RAYS (87-57)
John Jaso C
Ben Zobrist 2B
Carl Crawford LF
Evan Longoria 3B
Matt Joyce RF
Dan Johnson DH
Carlos Pena 1B
B.J. Upton CF
Jason Bartlett SS

RHP James Shields (13-12, 4.98)
Shields vs. Yankees

TIME/TV: 7:10 p.m. / YES Network and ESPN

UMPIRES: HP Lance Barksdale, 1B Ed Rapuano, 2B Tom Hallion, 3B Ron Kulpa

WEATHER: Dome sweet dome.

THE DAY AFTER: After last night’s win, the Yankees are now 17-4 in games immediately following a shutout loss since the start of the 2008 season. They are 12-3 in their past 15 such games.

NOT AN EVERYDAY EVENT: Last night, Jorge Posada hit the Yankees second pinch-hit home run of the season. Colin Curtis had the first back on July 21. Posada’s was the Yankees first extra-inning pinch-hit home run since Matt Nokes hit a two-run shot on May 8, 1993 to beat Detroit. It was Posada’s fifth career extra-inning home run. According to Elias, only Jason Giambi, Carlos Pena and Albert Pujols have more among active players.

NICE, ROUND NUMBER: Mariano Rivera reached 30 saves last night. It’s the 13th time in his career that he’s save 30 in a season. Rivera has saved 30 games in eight straight seasons, the second-longest streak in baseball history behind Trevor Hoffman.

UPDATE, 7:35 p.m.: Phil Hughes gets through a 1-2-3 bottom of the first after Robinson Cano gives the Yankees a 1-0 lead in the top. As my friend Marc Carig pointed out, the Yankees seemed to be doing a better job against Shields’ changeup in the first inning.

UPDATE, 7:38 p.m.: Off the bat, I was thinking double for Kearns. Clearly Kearns was thinking the same. Matt Joyce, apparently, thought otherwise.

UPDATE, 8:09 p.m.: Cano and Berkman have started the fourth inning with back-to-back singles. Meanwhile, Phil Hughes has plowed through the Rays lineup his first time through the order. He looks strong, much better than the last time he skipped a start. Maybe that relief inning was a good idea.

UPDATE, 8:22 p.m.: The Yankees stranded a couple of runners in the top of the fourth, but Hughes worked a hitless bottom half to keep the 1-0 lead intact.

UPDATE, 8:40 p.m.: Phil Hughes has allowed two base runners, and now both have scored. Dan Johnson just hit his fourth home run of the year, a two-run shot that stayed just inside the right-field foul pole. It’s a 2-1 Rays lead.

UPDATE, 9:13 p.m.: Momentary panic for the Yankees, but Derek Jeter seems to be OK and Joe Maddon seems to be arguing that the pitch hit the bat first. Either way, Jeter’s at first and Maddon has been ejected.

UPDATE, 9:19 p.m.: The replay makes it look like Jeter got away with one there, and Granderson made it count with a two-run home run to put the Yankees back in front 3-2 in the seventh.

UPDATE, 9:33 p.m.: Dan Johnson’s second home run of the night, fifth of the season, has put the Rays back in front 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh.

UPDATE, 9:35 p.m.: After a two-out single by Carlos Pena, Hughes is done and Chamberlain is in. Two mistakes to Johnson have turned an otherwise very good start into a potential loss.

Andy Pettitte is ready to be a major league starter again, and with that, the Yankees have a five-man rotation. As long as Pettitte comes through Thursday’s side session with no problems, he’ll start Sunday’s series finale in Baltimore.

“I want to see him go out there,” Joe Girardi said. “And I want to see how he feels after his side. Right now all indications are that he feels good, which is really important. It would be frustrating if he didn’t, for him and for all of us, but I want to see him go out there Sunday and see how sharp he is.”

CC Sabathia will pitch on regular rest Saturday — tomorrow’s off day will not give him an extra day — and that’s a decision, Girardi said, is at least partially based on next week’s four-game series at home against the Rays. Using Sabathia on Saturday instead of Sunday means he’ll pitch the last game of that Rays series, once again matching up against David Price, who is also staying on regular rest for Tampa Bay.

Girardi said the Yankees haven’t mapped out the rotation beyond Sunday, but he plans to stick with Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova. That means Javier Vazquez and Dustin Moseley will be moved back to the bullpen.

As for lining up his starters for a playoff rotation: “I won’t do that until we know exactly that we’re in the playoffs,” Girardi said.

• Nick Swisher is probably not available to pinch hit tonight — “I don’t think so,” Girardi said — but he does feel significantly better after yesterday’s cortisone shot. “I can’t give you a time table because I don’t know,” he said. “This is all on a pain basis. Once that gets out of there, once we get that last bit of inflammation that’s in there, just get everything intact. I’d rather be playing at 100 percent than 50.”

• Brett Gardner was told to take another day off. The Yankees are thinking he could be back to 100 percent after taking yesterday, today and tomorrow off. “I think I could swing,” Gardner said. “It feels a lot better today. I feel good about how it feels and expect to be playing on Friday.”

• Brian Cashman has confirmed that the Yankees could put Royce Ring on the playoff roster if they wanted to. That’s because of the loophole that lets him replace an injured pitcher, in this case Damaso Marte. It’s the same way the Yankees got Freddy Guzman on last year’s playoff roster, essentially for Xavier Nady.

• Speaking of Ring, he was home in San Diego taking his baby to a six-month checkup when he got the call. He got on a 6:20 flight, slept on the plane, and arrived at the ballpark at about 4 p.m.

• Right now the Yankees rotation has back-to-back lefties. “You do like to split them up when you can,” Girardi said. “But right now I’m not worried about that.”

• Girardi on Phil Hughes facing the Rays: “Command is important and changing speeds is important against this club. If you stick with strictly fastballs, this club will hurt you.”

• Pretty good line from Swisher about Jorge Posada’s monster home run last night, which landed on the roof of a restaurant in center field: “You don’t see many dudes going on top of that. I would have liked to have seen if that would have hit our restaurant. You’ve got to be a grown man to go up there, boys.”

Associated Press photos of Pettitte and Posada

No big surprises here, but Joe Girardi has officially announced his rotation for the Baltimore series.

Friday: A.J. Burnett
Saturday: CC Sabathia
Sunday: Andy Pettitte

If Pettitte can’t go for some reason — he’s scheduled to throw a bullpen tomorrow — then Javier Vazquez will make Sunday’s start. Assuming everything goes to play, though, Vazquez is a full-time reliever.

Girardi said he expects to stay on rotation after the Baltimore series, with a five-man rotation of Burnett, Sabathia, Pettitte, Ivan Nova and Phil Hughes.