The LoHud Yankees Blog

It’s hard to believe that only four days ago the Yankees came home from a West Coast trip feeling good.

Three games later, the Yankees have fallen from a one-game lead in the American League East to a two-game deficit. They’ve been swept at home by the Red Sox for the second time this season, and along the way they seem to have lost their setup man for the season.

“The old saying, when you’re going good you’re not as good as you think, and when you’re going bad you’re not as bad as you think,” Mark Teixeira said. “They just came and beat us. They swung the bats really well, scored a lot of runs and pitched pretty well, pitched when they needed to. Not much you can do about it. They just beat us.”

Thing is, the Yankees had this game won. Curtis Granderson had homered off Josh Beckett (payback for Beckett hitting Derek Jeter one batter earlier) and CC Sabathia had drilled David Ortiz (payback for the Red Sox beaning six Yankees this series and Ortiz flipping his bat in the opener). The Yankees carried a 2-0 lead into the seventh, which had to be the most deflating inning of the season.

“That’s the outing,” Sabathia said. “We lose the game and get swept. I take total blame for everything that happened in the seventh inning, and I’ll be back out there in five days.”

These teams don’t play one another again until the first weekend in August.

“There’s a lot of baseball to be played until we see them again,” Joe Girardi said. “How we play the next month and a half or two months until we see them is going to have a lot to do with where we’re at. It’s not how you wanted it to end tonight, but it did. You have to move on.”

Here’s Sabathia.

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And here’s Teixeira.

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• Sabathia on the pitch that hit David Ortiz: “I threw a two-seamer and it kind of got away.”

• I wasn’t in the Red Sox clubhouse, but apparently Ortiz blamed the media for him being hit tonight and refused to answer any questions.

• Three Yankees were hit by a pitch tonight, matching the most by an American League team this season. The last time the Yankees had three players hit by a pitch in one game was June 15, 2010 against the Phillies.

• Girardi said he had no problem with Beckett not being ejected for hitting Granderson with a curveball in the fifth. Both benches had been warned, but a curveball in that situation isn’t going to get a pitcher ejected.

• Girardi and Teixeira thought the key at-bat in that pivotal seventh inning was Jed Lowrie’s triple that went right past Teixeira into the right field corner, where Nick Swisher misplayed it and fell down. That hit came immediately after Ortiz singled to lead off the inning, and that made a difference. “That’s one of the craziest plays because if it’s anyone but Ortiz (at first base), I probably am closer to the line,” Teixeira said. “But because I know Ortiz isn’t going to run, I can get off a little bit quicker and I’m one extra step in the hole, and I dive down the line and can’t get it. It goes off the tip of my glove.”

• Sabathia pointed to a different hit as the turning point of that inning: “I think Mike Cameron on that at-bat,” he said. “Just not making a pitch being able to get an out right there, I think, really hurt.” Cameron doubled in Lowrie instead of making the second out of the inning.

• In 21 innings against the Yankees this season, Beckett has allowed only two runs (the Granderson two-run homer). He’s 3-0 against the Yankees, 2-2 against the rest of baseball. “He never gives in,” Teixeira said. “We go down and look at the video a lot, look at where the pitches are. I think he might have left one or two balls over the middle of the plate all game, and one of them was Curtis’s and Curtis made him pay. After that, he didn’t give up much.”

• No one seemed to have an issue with Ortiz doing the Rangers’ claw gesture at second base after his two-run double. Even Robinson Cano, who plays second, said he didn’t see it.

• The Yankees have lost 10 of their past 14 at home.

• The Yankees are now 28-5 when leading after six innings. The seven runs in the seventh marked their highest single-inning total allowed this season. Six straight home losses is the longest single-season home losing streak against Boston since 1912.

• Sabathia matched his season-high for runs allowed and equaled his total earned runs for his past four starts combined. Last time he allowed six runs was his previous start against the Red Sox.

• Derek Jeter moved within 10 of career hit No. 3,000.

• Jeff Marquez made his second major league appearance and first with the Yankees.

Associated Press photos

The Yankees got their revenge when CC Sabathia drilled David Ortiz in the fourth inning. Ortiz got his revenge when he led the Red Sox to a seven-run seventh inning that buried the Yankees in an 8-3 loss at Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox have won eight of nine games against the Yankees this season, and they’ve swept back-to-back series in the Bronx. Ortiz had never been hit by a pitch in 697 regular-season plate appearances against the Yankees, but Sabathia hit him after Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez were hit by pitches earlier in the game. At the time the Yankees had a 2-0 lead on Curtis Granderson’s two-run home run. The Yankees led the American League East three days ago. Now they’re two games behind Boston.

Associated Press photo

YANKEES (33-26)
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Brett Gardner LF
Francisco Cervelli C

LHP CC Sabathia (7-3, 2.80)
Sabathia vs. Red Sox

RED SOX (35-26)
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Marco Scutaro 2B
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Kevin Youkilis 3B
David Ortiz DH
Jed Lowrie SS
Carl Crawford LF
Mike Cameron RF
Jason Varitek C

RHP Josh Beckett (4-2, 2.01)
Beckett vs. Yankees

TIME/TV: Originally scheduled for 7:05 p.m., now 10:30 p.m., YES Network and MLB Network

WEATHER: Hot early, but the rain helped. Not too bad now.

UMPIRES: HP Hunter Wendelstedt, 1B Brian Knight, 2B Jerry Layne, 3B Bob Davidson

SWISHALISH: Nick Swisher has hit safely in 10 of his past 11 games, batting .297 with three doubles, three home runs, seven RBI and nine walks since May 27.

SWEEP BUSTER: According to Elias, since joining the Yankees, CC Sabathia has won each of his four starts in which the Yankees were in danger of being swept. Most recently he did it on May 29 in Seattle.

STRONG FINISH: The Yankees are 15-5 in series finales this season, winning each of their last season. They are 7-3 in series finales at home.

TRYING TO GET BACK: The Yankees have spent 47 of 70 days in first place — or tied for first place — this season.

UPDATE, 10:29 p.m.: Must say, there are a lot of people still here. Not sure they’ll all still be here when it’s 1 a.m. and we’re just starting the sixth inning, but more people than I expected stuck through the delay.

UPDATE, 10:38 p.m.: Francisco Cervelli’s throws are all over the place these days.

UPDATE, 10:43 p.m.: Jeter hit by the second pitch. Things might get interesting.

UPDATE, 10:44 p.m.: Granderson makes it count, following the hit batter with a two-run homer.

UPDATE, 10:56 p.m.: Is it just me, or did Ortiz look like he was expecting to be drilled by one of those first two pitches?

UPDATE, 11:26 p.m.: Wow. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a call quite like that. Bad call by Brian Knight is an opening for the Yankees.

UPDATE, 11:35 p.m.: Absolutely no reason for Beckett to intentionally hit Rodriguez in that situation, and the Yankees know it. But still.

UPDATE, 11:40 p.m.: Standing ovation as CC drills Ortiz right in the hip. He did it even with a runner on first. Ortiz took his time going to first, but that’s to be expected. Benches warned.

UPDATE, 12:11 a.m.: Even with warnings, a guy’s not going to be ejected for a hitting someone in the foot with a curveball. It’s just not going to happen. Beckett got Granderson with a curve, but he’s still in there.

UPDATE, 12:53 a.m.: Seven-run seventh inning was started by an Ortiz single and punctuated by an Ortiz double. He did the Rangers claw when he got to first base. It’s 7-2 Red Sox.

UPDATE, 1:03 a.m.: Jeff Marquez making his Yankees debut. The crowd has thinned considerably.

The crew just came out to start removing the tarp.

Still no word on what time first pitch might be, but at least there’s some activity. Tonight’s NBA Finals game is on the big screen.

UPDATE, 9:35 p.m.: Still no time announced, but the tarp was just pealed off the field.

UPDATE, 9:39 p.m.: First pitch scheduled for 10:30.

I’m going to have to make this pretty quick because I still have a ton of interview stuff to listen through and a lot of words to write for the newspaper. You already know the basics: A dye contrast MRI today showed that Joba Chamberlain has a torn ligament in his right elbow. Chamberlain said he broke down in tears soon after hearing the news.

It’s not certain that Chamberlain will have Tommy John surgery, but that seems unavoidable. The MRI results are being sent to Dr. James Andrews.

Chamberlain and the Yankees are perplexed. He never felt the ligament tear and his only symptom is some tightness after throwing. Chamberlain’s velocity has been good and he’s been able to throwing breaking balls, which usually cause pitchers considerable pain when they need Tommy John. Chamberlain also has no problem doing little things — opening a door, twisting off the cap of a water bottle — which usually cause some discomfort for Tommy John candidates.

“Joba must have a high pain threshold,” Joe Girardi said. “In the future, if he was to say something, you would have to say it might be worse than he is leading on. I’m watching him do things today, things that are supposed to bother a guy that needs Tommy John. It’s not bothering him at all. The lesson to be learned: The body’s an interesting thing.”

Chamberlain showed up heavier than usual in spring training, but his arm was never an issue, and both Girardi and Brian Cashman said they don’t believe Chamberlain’s offseason conditioning is to blame for the current problem. He’s pitched well this season, but the pitching seems to have cost him his elbow.

Cashman said no trade market has emerged for a reliever — “Not to my knowledge,” he said — and while the Yankees will look into the organization for potential help, Cashman said Andrew Brackman, Dellin Betances and Manny Banuelos are not options. Brackman’s not pitching well enough, and Betances and Banuelos aren’t ready.

Here’s Girardi.

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UPDATE, 6:40 p.m.: No first-pitch time announced, but the Yankees and Red Sox will start in a delay.

• Phil Hughes pitched two innings in extended spring training today. Because it was in a game, the Yankees had a radar gun on him and Hughes was 90-92 with his fastball. That seems pretty encouraging for a guy at this stage of his rehab. “A lot of 92s,” Girardi said.

• Hughes will start in the Gulf Coast League on Tuesday.

• Russell Martin had an MRI that showed no structural damage in his back. “He’s slightly improved from yesterday,” Girardi said. “But not enough to go.” Martin said he felt bad this morning, but his back has felt better as the day has progressed. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’s able to play tomorrow.

• Cashman revealed that the Yankees finally diagnosed Mark Prior with a hernia. He could be headed for surgery. Obviously he’s not an option to fill Chamberlain’s spot.

UPDATE, 8:43 p.m.: Nevermind, the Yankees just clarified to say that Prior was tested for a sports hernia but those tests came back negative. He’s out with an abdominal and groin strain.

• Speaking of relievers: Pedro Feliciano has begun playing catch, but Rafael Soriano has not. “We’re still a ways away,” Girardi said.

• Jorge Posada said everything went well with his son’s surgery. This was his son’s ninth surgery, and it’s supposed to be the last one. “But they said that the last time,” Posada said. Posada got home from the hospital around 9 p.m. and checked the score of the Yankees game, but he didn’t watch it because his son wanted Posada to lie in bed with him after the surgery, so Posada stayed there and fell asleep next to his little boy.

• Tarp is on the field. Looks like this game might not start on time.

RED SOX
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Marco Scutaro 2B
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Kevin Youkilis 3B
David Ortiz DH
Jed Lowrie SS
Carl Crawford LF
Mike Cameron RF
Jason Varitek C

Associated Press photo

Joba Chamberlain is almost certainly heading for surgery with a torn ligament in his right elbow. Joe Girardi said he doesn’t know how Chamberlain could avoid surgery.

The problem was discovered in a dye contrast MRI today. Girardi said Chamberlain has no symptoms, and has passed every strength test. The Yankees don’t know when this happened or how long he’s had it.

The good news for the day: Phil Hughes threw 30 pitches today and was 90-92 mph.

It’s really a shame that every day doesn’t start with me and my friends being allowed to play baseball in a big league stadium. Here’s today’s lineup.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Brett Gardner LF
Francisco Cervelli C

On a Thursday morning conference call, Yankees amateur scouting director Damon Oppenheimer said he’s cautious about drafting the sons and brothers of Major League players, so the decision to take Dante Bichette Jr. with this year’s top pick wasn’t taken lightly.

“It’s case-by-case,” Oppenheimer said. “We’ve seen some who have been sons of or brothers of who have been overly pampered, overly sheltered. They don’t need it enough because there’s enough money. Then we’ve seen kids like Dante. This kid works. He is a worker. His regimen, his schedule, his routine, from the way he eats to the yoga to spending time at the gym to hitting. It’s second to none. There haven’t been many like this in terms of what he does makeup-wise. Parents have installed in him what it takes to be a professional baseball player, on the field to off the field. That’s a big obstacle that he’s already working through.”

Although Bichette is committed to the University of Georgia, Oppenheimer said he’s not worried about signability.

“You get guys sometimes in drafting where, their goals are to be drafted or their goals are to be drafted high or their goals are to get X amount of dollars from the draft,” Oppenheimer said. “In this situation, his goal has nothing to do with where he’s drafted, his goal has to do with what kind of Major League Baseball player he’s going to be. And that’s a different mindset that some guys have to learn later, and he doesn’t have to learn that. He knows what he wants. It’s a big deal.”

—

• Bichette staying at third could have as much to do with opportunity as ability. “It’s probably going to be more of where we’re at at the time he’s ready to crack the big leagues,” Oppenheimer said. “Are we going to be in a situation where third base is an option or are we going to be in a situation where it could be corner outfield?”

• The Yankees class is high-school heavy, but Oppenheimer said their top college pick — lefty Sam Stafford out of Texas — could move quickly. “He’s starting to come on,” he said. “He’s starting to make a lot of progress. He strikes guys out, he misses bats. Walk numbers are a little high than what you’d love to have, but if they weren’t, he would have gone earlier than this.”

• Starting with Bichette, the Yankees took a series of corner guys who have power potential. “I think we know that we needed to infuse some power into the system, and it seemed like it was what was available this year to us,” Oppenheimer said. “Last year it seemed like it was middle of the field. This year it seemed like there were more corner, power guys.” The power bats Oppenheimer specifically mentioned were Bichette, fourth-rounder Matt Duran, fifth-rounder Greg Bird and seventh-rounder Austin Jones.

• Duran is a local guy from New Rochelle, but Oppenheimer said “the New York factor really wasn’t a factor.” Instead, the Yankees scouts saw Duran a lot and saw considerable progress. Oppenheimer himself saw Duran face pitchers from the Newark Bears — pro guys throwing in the 90s with legitimate breaking balls — and Duran had a line drive to right-center and a home run to left. “He can hit,” Oppenheimer said. “He has power. He has a simple swing. He’s just slowly but surely, this guy’s getting better.”

• Sounds like the Yankees are also high on Bird, who’s going to stay at catcher for now but could have enough bat to move around. “Greg wants to catch, and he’s going to work at it to do that,” Oppenheimer said. “If his bat can play to the level that we think it’s going to play (with) the power and if he’s a catcher, it gives us a real strong value. If he goes to first base or something like that, he still has at-bat power that we really like that, it would still be very, very valuable.”

• Oppenheimer singled out three power arms, two out of high school and one out of junior college: Philip Wetherall, Zachary Arneson and Jonathan Gray. Those are the 8th, 9th and 10th rounders.

• Asked about truly high-ceiling players, Oppenheimer mentioned Bird and sixth-rounder Jake Cave. From a little lower in the draft, Oppenheimer said 14th rounder William Davis and 18th rounder Hayden Sharp are high-ceiling type guys. Both are right-handed pitchers out of high school.

• Guys in the very late rounds might not sign right away: “We’re going to follow these guys and see what we’ve got through the summer,” Oppenheimer said.

• The Yankees third-round pick is a 6-foot-5 high school kid named Jordan Cote out of New Hampshire. The Yankees had a cross-checker watching him as recently as Saturday. “You have to approach the Northeast differently,” Oppenheimer said. “You have to approach it like the season almost starts in April, and a lot of times guys have shut their minds off on guys at that point. Scouts have gone in, scouting directors are trying to make their decisions on what their board is going to look like before those guys really get thawed out to play. We’re trying to keep those guys alive and we think that they keep getting better.”

• Check here for a list of the Yankees full draft class.

Four days ago, the Yankees finished a West Coast road trip with their sixth win in seven games. They came home geared up for a first-place showdown with the Red Sox.

“Guys feeling good about themselves, feeling good about the way they’re throwing the baseball, the way they’re hitting the baseball, I think that’s important,” Joe Girardi said before the team flew out of Los Angeles.

The Yankees have played two games since then, and now the feeling around this team could not be more different. The Yankees have one win in eight games against the Red Sox this season, and they’ve now lost five in a row at home against their division rivals. Tonight they turn to their ace.

CC Sabathia has won each of his past four starts, pitching at least eight innings in every one of them. He has a 1.60 ERA and he’s given up one home run since mid-May. That’s the good news.

The bad news: Sabathia has three losses this season. Two of them have come against Boston.

“I feel good any time CC takes the mound,” Girardi said. “We need a big performance from him.”

Associated Press photo

A.J. Burnett had tremendous success against the Red Sox when he was with Toronto, and he has yet to beat the Red Sox since coming to the Yankees. But Burnett didn’t want to talk about that tonight.

“I’m not in Toronto any more,” he said. “I’m tired of hearing that. That’s just retarded. If anything’s different, I made pitches in Toronto. I didn’t make pitches tonight. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

It was that kind of day for the Yankees. Mark Teixeira woke up feeling good, but everything after that was a debacle, capped by a clearly frustrated starting pitcher using the word “retarded” in a postgame interview. That usually doesn’t go over too well.

His choice of words aside, Burnett wasn’t necessarily wrong. It always comes down to making pitches, and Burnett didn’t make them tonight. But that was only part of the Yankees problem. Francisco Cervelli made two costly throwing errors, Brett Gardner got a bad read and failed to score on a wild pitch, and Eduardo Nunez somehow, someway managed to foul a ball off his own head.

For the Yankees, this day was a mess from the moment Joba Chamberlain put his right elbow into that MRI tube. It’s amazing to think it was only three days ago that the team seemed to be flying high after a terrific road trip. Now the Yankees are winless in their first five home games against the Red Sox for the first time since 1913.

“We’re one game back, I believe, so we’re not really in a hole,” Joe Girardi said. “Obviously we’re not happy with our record against the Red Sox, but you go out and win a game tomorrow, you’re tied, and they leave town, and you just keep plugging away.”

Here’s Girardi’s postgame.

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• Here’s Russell Martin describing his injury: “It just happened yesterday, after the game actually. It was during the workout. I went through my regular routine. I did my legs and then finished up with dead lifts. I did one rep, and as I was coming up, I felt something in my back and it just hasn’t felt right since.” Martin said he’s never felt anything like this.

• Here’s Gardner’s explanation of his bad read on the wild pitch in the sixth: “Initially I thought it hit him, and then I paused for a second. And then, when the ball came back off, it kind of bounced back to where Varitek was running back toward it, and it was too late at that point. I shouldn’t have froze.”

• Gardner said he saw Jeter motioning for him to run, but at that point, he through it was too late, and he didn’t want to take the chance with only one out.

• Hard to explain Cervelli. The guy came to the big leagues with a reputation as a very good defensive catcher, but he really hasn’t shown that lately. Tonight, two throws to second base sailed into the outfield, which didn’t help Burnett in the early innings. “I had to call him out to the mound,” Burnett said. “And (I) said, ‘Listen, we both need to clean it up. I’m not doing my job either.’ Just try to make it easy on him because he’s trying his hardest out there.”

• Burnett on the David Ortiz home run pitch: “If he doesn’t hit that ball out, he’s got a problem. It’s right down the middle, 3-2, and he basically did what he’s supposed to do with it.”

• Burnett said the two extra days of rest hurt him. “I was overly strong,” he said. “Pitches were going everywhere and I was a little out of it mechanically. That’s what happened.”

• Burnett said he didn’t see Ortiz’s home run reaction tonight — it wasn’t over-the-top — and he didn’t see it last night. Girardi shrugged off the idea that Ortiz is too comfortable at the plate in Yankee Stadium. “You’ve got to make your pitches, that’s the bottom line,” Girardi said. “If you throw balls that are in the middle or a little off to the middle either way, guys are going to hit them. That’s it. You can get in situations where you make hitters uncomfortable, but if you don’t make your pitch, you’re not going to get them out.”

• Weird night for Boone Logan. He couldn’t have been worse against his first three hitters — single, walk, walk — then he retired the next four, including strikeouts against Kevin Youkilis and Carl Crawford. “It’s throwing strikes for him,” Girardi said. “The bottom line is getting ahead and being able to put people away, and he hasn’t been able to do that. He’s had a hard time getting ahead of hitters.”

• Talked to Jeff Marquez briefly. He came up in the Yankees system and seemed thrilled to be here. He had to rush to the airport in Chicago this afternoon to catch a flight that would get him to New York in time for the game. He said he told the cab driver to step on it, and he got to his gate 10 minutes before the plane pulled away.

• Jeter said he hadn’t talked to Jorge Posada since Posada’s son went in for surgery today. “I haven’t spoken to him, no,” Jeter said. “I’m sure I will today. Hopefully everything is good.”

• Former Yankees spot starter Dustin Moseley hurt himself tonight.

• This loss matched the Yankees largest margin of defeat this season. It also matched their most runs allowed this season and their most runs allowed against the Red Sox in the new Yankee Stadium.

• Jeter’s strikeout in the third inning snapped a career-high stretch of 58 plate appearances without a K. According to Elias, that’s the longest such stretch by a Yankee since Hideki Matsui went 58 straight in 2008. Jeter also moved within 11 of career hit No. 3,000.

• Cervelli had his seventh career three-hit game, matching a career high. He reached base four times (also a walk). He had a bases-loaded single in the sixth and is now 9-for-16 (.563) in his career with the bases loaded. That’s all from the Yankees postgame notes.

• Alex Rodriguez’s solo homer in the fourth inning was the 624th of his career and gave him 1,865 career RBI, breaking a tie with Mel Ott for sole possession of ninth place on baseball’s all-time list.

Associated Press photos