The LoHud Yankees Blog

After the bases-loaded strikeout and the game-ending strikeout, Alex Rodriguez stood at his locker last night and swore he was healthy enough to have done the job.

“Health had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Fair enough. The hip injury is in the past, the knee has been fixed and Rodriguez learned to deal with the sprained thumb, but less than a month ago, Rodriguez sat out a full week because of the thumb. A month before that, he was still on the disabled list because of the knee.

Being technically healthy now doesn’t mean this season’s nagging injuries didn’t play a role in his 2-for-18 division series. It’s surely no coincidence that he hit just .191 in the last two months of the regular season.

“Alex had injuries he obviously had to fight through,” Brian Cashman said. “He had surgery on the knee. He was tyring to do that on the run with the clock running out, so I’m sure it was a combination of health and trying to get his timing down. He gave the best effort he could. This guy’s a hard worker. He cares. He wants to be successful, and more times that not, he is. He’s hurting like the rest of us are here now. He’ll come back next year in great shape. When he’s healthy on an everyday bassis, he does perform, and he will perform again.”

The Yankees have little choice but to believe that’s true, that Rodriguez will perform again. He was healthy for the first two-plus months of the season and played more or less up to his usual standards.

What’s a reasonable expectation moving forward?

“I’d like to have a healthy year to think about that,” Rodriguez said. “When you have a knee surgery in the middle of the year, it messes everything up. Baseball is a game of repetition. It’s a game of 145 or 150 games and 600 at-bats. Obviously when you see guys like Curtis and Robbie and Tex and the tremendous years that they all had, you need at-bats. Baseballs a game that you can’t just turn off the switch and turn it on.”

Associated Press photo

Ivan Nova has a Grade 1 flexor strain of his right forearm.

After being pulled from last night’s game, Nova saw Dr. Christopher Ahmad today at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and had an MRI, which revealed the injury.

The Yankees say the injury is expected to heal without complications this winter.

Late notice, but I’m hoping some of you can stop by at in a few minutes to chat all about the Yankees season coming to an end and where the team goes from here. We’re throwing this together on the fly, but let’s say noon, as usual.

So… LoHud Yankees chat. Noon. Today. That’s in a little more than a half hour. Hope you can stop by for a while.

Maybe the offseason officially begins when the World Series ends, or maybe it begins the day players file for free agency, or when you see that first signing rumor on Twitter.

Or maybe it started last night, the very moment Alex Rodriguez struck out and the Yankees season came to an end.

Of all the things the Yankees have to do this winter, surely there’s nothing more crucial than figuring out what to do with CC Sabathia, who can opt out and become a free agent.

“Obviously, he’s our ace so he ranks highly,” Brian Cashman said. “I can’t predict how everything goes. We’ll take this thing one day at a time. The winter’s come upon us but I’m not prepared to talk about the winter, unfortunately.”

Sabathia has said time and time again that he loves being in New York, and he said it again last night. But he also acknowledged that opting out is a possibility, and most outside observes seem to agree that it’s more than a possibility. It might be an inevitability.

“Of course it’s a decision,” Sabathia said. “It’s there so, just see (what happens). I can’t even begin to tell you what I’m thinking right now and what’s going to happen or anything like that.”

All things being equal, would Sabathia want to be back with the Yankees.

“I can’t really even answer that right now,” he said. “I’m just thinking about tonight, what happened. I’ll take the next couple of days, relax, hang out with the family and make a decision.”

Here’s Sabathia speaking briefly last night.

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Associated Press photo

Obviously these next few days are going to be spent looking back on what exactly happened this week, and what might happen going forward. For now, there was only disappointment in a Yankees clubhouse that not so long ago celebrating a division championship.

“It’s terrible,” Joe Girardi said. “We only accomplished one goal when the season ended. We had to fight like crazy to get there. It’s a really empty feeling. It’s an empty feeling for everyone in that room, and it hurts.”

The problem was the offense, but that was largely a problem of timing rather than raw production. The Yankees outscored the Tigers 28-17 this series, and 28 runs were the second-most in franchise history for a single division series. The Yankees scored at least nine runs in each of their two wins.

Problem was, they scored a total of nine runs in their three loses. The Tigers won those three games by a total of four runs.

“I tell you every time you go to the playoffs, it’s about pitching,” Derek Jeter said. “You’re not going to sit back and hit home runs, score 10 runs. I mean, we scored a lot of runs two days ago, but it was really one inning. You don’t just come out here and take BP in the playoffs. Teams you’re facing have good pitching. That’s why they’re at this point. So you can get away with a lot of things in the regular season that you can’t get away with in the playoffs.”

As in, a team can get away with its fourth, fifth and sixth hitters going a combined 9-for-55 during a five-game stretch in the regular season, but that doesn’t work in a five-game series. Of course the Tigers pitching has a lot to do with it, and of course guys like Max Scherzer and Joaquin Benoit deserve plenty of credit, but Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher were clearly frustrated (or frustrating, depending on your point of view).

When those three failed to get a big hit with the bases loaded in the seventh inning, that was basically the turning point of the game and the story of the series.

“It was 3-1 and I said, ‘I’m going to get a pitch to crush right here,’” Teixeira said. “You almost start thinking about the bases clearing, the crowd cheering. I walked there, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough to get the job done… If we were one at-bat better, we might win the game. If we get one hit with the bases loaded, but every single game you play, there’s going to be five or 10 things you can look at and say, ‘If we did this’ or ‘If we did that.’ Unfortunately, we had a couple of those this series.”

As I said, I’m sure the next few days will be spent diving deeper into how the Yankees got here and where the go from here. For now, though, this is the end of the road.

“Some days you just get beat,” Girardi said.

Here’s Girardi’s postgame.

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• Ivan Nova said his forearm got tight in the second inning. He didn’t feel it at all during the first inning, so it was a non-factor on the home runs. “We didn’t like the way the ball was coming out of his hand,” Girardi said. “I think it was directly related to that. Some of his fastballs were cutting, and we never saw that. So I had to make a change, and I had to, you know, try to get our bullpen through it.”

• Nova said he’ll go for an MRI tomorrow.

• Nova was the first Yankees rookie to start a winner-take-all postseason game since Mel Stottlemyre in the 1964 World Series against St. Louis. “It’s hard,” Nova said. “We lost and we’ve got to go home now. You don’t want to be in this situation. You want to keep going, going to the World Series.”

• Rodriguez hasn’t been productive since coming back from knee surgery, but he said health was a non-factor this series. “Everything this postseason is on me,” he said. “Let’s make that crystal clear. There’s no excuses for what happened these five games. I was healthy enough to do whatever I needed to do.”

• The Yankees went down in order in the ninth inning. Really, their last gasp was the ball that Jeter drove to the wall in the eighth inning. Off the bat, I thought he might have hit it out. It would have been a go-ahead, two-run homer with Mariano Rivera coming in to shut the door in the ninth. “I thought it had a chance,” Jeter said. “It was too high, but you never know here.”

• CC Sabathia seemed especially dejected at his locker. He’d never pitched in relief and said he tried not to change his usual approach. “I try not to,” he said. “I tried to get ahead with the fastball, and that didn’t really work, so I went to my secondary pitches.”

• Sabathia had gone 370 consecutive appearances in the regular season and postseason before finally pitching out of the bullpen. Among the pitchers whose first career relief appearance came in the postseason, Sabathia had the third-longest streak. Mike Mussina went 400 starts before pitching in relief in the 2003 ALCS, and John Smoltz went 380 starts before his first relief appearance in the 1999 NLCS.

• Sabathia wouldn’t commit one way or the other about his opt-out. “I can’t even wrap my head around that right now,” he said. “I’m just thinking about what I didn’t do to help us win. In the next couple of days, next couple of weeks I’ll think about that and we’ll see what happens.”

• Of course Sabathia felt he could have pitched longer. “It was just up to them,” he said. “I felt great. If you give me the option, I’ll pitch as long as I can. It was just up to them.”

• Robinson Cano set a Yankees division series record with nine RBI. The previous record was seven by Paul O’Neill. It’s the most RBI by a Yankee in a single postseason series — any round — since Hideki Matsui and Bernie Williams had 10 each in the 2004 ALCS.

• Jorge Posada had a .579 on-base percentage this series. He batted .429, his third-highest single-series postseason batting average behind the 2006 ALDS (.500) and the 2001 ALDS (.444).

• Rivera lowered his career postseason ERA to 0.70, the lowest mark all-time for a pitcher with at least 30 postseason innings. This was his 96th career postseason game, passing Kenny Lofton for sole possession of seventh place on baseball’s all-time list (pitcher or position player).

• Rivera threw eight pitches this series and got four outs. All of his pitches were strikes.

• Weird situation with Benoit and the band-aid on his face. Jim Leyland said it was an in-grown hair, and the band-aid was to keep it from being infected. Girardi asked the home plate umpire to have it removed. “I’m not trying to play a mind game or anything,” Girardi said. “But it was pretty big band-aid and it was somewhat distracting, I think. It’s hard not to look at. And I’m sure he had a legitimate reason, and it’s not something I necessarily wanted to do, but to me it would have been a distraction.”

• This once, the final word goes to the opposing manager: “The Yankees are so good that I would be lying if I said it didn’t give me a little extra satisfaction to be able to do it here in the fifth game,” Leyland said. “I don’t mean that disrespectfully, I mean that respectfully. It gave me a great thrill to be able to do it here in Yankee Stadium in Game 5. Unbelievable. I was just talking to Dave Dombrowski, other than the American League pennant and that time in the World Series, this will be a game I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

Associated Press photos

Jorge Posada’s eyes were a little bit red when he emerged from the off-limits area and stepped in front of his locker. They were worse when he left.

Posada’s Yankees career most likely came to a crashing end Thursday night. Make that, almost certainly did.

And when he left the clubhouse, you got the idea that he thought so, too.

He hit .429 in the series, with two more hits in the 3-2 loss in Game 5, after salvaging his season by hitting 282 with eight homers and 27 RBI in his final 71 games. But the writing is on the wall, the catcher’s gear is in storage, and the Yankees are going to need those DH at-bats — and by the end, Posada was just hitting left-handed — for Alex Rodriguez and some of the other bats on the team.

Did Posada consider whether he’d just played his final game in a Yankees uniform:

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said. “That’s a tough one. We’ll see. I don’t want to look at it like that. We lost. We’ll see what happens in the offseason.”

Would he want to come back in a similar, or lesser role?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I really can’t answer that right now. We just lost a tough series. We come back home to lose 3-2, it’s a tough one.”

Did he think about it during the game?

“No. No. It was all about the game. You put yourself in the situation of trying to win the ballgame. That’s all you think about.”

Asked about memories (presumably of all his years as a Yankee, the question was inaudible):

“I don’t go back as far as (yesterday). I don’t know. I can’t answer it. Really. I gave it all on the field.”

About the fans:

“They’ve been awesome. The fans have been unbelievable to this team and to me, and I give them a lot of credit. They kept me here.”

If this loss hurts more than others …

“Sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Then  he broke down in tears and left the clubhouse.

AP photo.

In a must-win Game 5, the Yankees burned through nearly their entire pitching staff, but it was missed scoring opportunities that made the difference and left the Tigers celebrating at Yankee Stadium. Detroit is moving on. The Yankees are finished. A 3-2 Detroit win tonight sealed the division series and ended the Yankees season. After Ivan Nova lasted just two innings, the Yankees used six different relievers to allowed just one more run, but the offense left 11 runners on base, including the bases loaded twice. The Yankees outscored the Tigers 28-17 this series, but on nights the offense sputtered, the Tigers were able to win three games by a total of four runs.

Associated Press photo

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

RHP Ivan Nova (16-4, 3.70)
Nova vs. Tigers

TIGERS (2-2)
Austin Jackson CF
Ramon Santiago 2B
Delmon Young LF
Miguel Cabrera 1B
Victor Martinez DH
Don Kelly RF
Jhonny Peralta SS
Alex Avila C
Wilson Betemit 3B

RHP Doug Fister (11-13, 2.83)
Fister vs. Yankees

TIME/TV: 8:07., TBS

WEATHER: It’s starting to get cold, but at least it looks like they’ll play. Only the slightest chance of rain tonight.

UMPIRES: HP Ted Barrett, 1B Bill Welke, 2B Tony Randazzo, 3B Eric Cooper, LF Gerry Davis, RF Dan Iassogna

WINNER TAKE ALL: The Yankees are playing an ALDS Game 5 for the seventh time, their first since their 2005 series loss and the Angels. This is the ninth time the Yankees have played a deciding Game 5 in a best-of-five format (also 1976 and 1977 in the ALCS).

CAPTAIN CLUTCH: Derek Jeter has played in seven winner-take-all postseason games, hitting safely in each one and combining to go 10-for-29 (.345) with four runs, two doubles, a home run and four RBI.

FIRST TIMER? According to Elias, Ivan Nova will be only the second rookie pitcher to make his first postseason start in a winner-take-all game, joining the Phillies’ Marty Bystrom in the 1980 NLCS Game 5 at Houston. Bystrom (5.1IP, 7H, 2R, 1ER, 2BB, 1K) did not record a decision in the 8-7, 10-inning Phillies victory. Don’t forget, Nova technically was not the starting pitcher in Game 1.

GO WITH GARDY: Brett Gardner has gone 4-for-7 (.571) with runners on base during this division series, including 2-for-2 with four RBI with runners in scoring position and two outs.

UPDATE, 8:07 p.m.: Pitches No. 6 and 7 from Nova are solo home runs, one by Don Kelly and one by Delmon Young, who now has three in the series.

UPDATE, 8:24 p.m.: Leadoff double in the top of the second, but Nova’s one out away from leaving that runner stranded. First time through the order, three Tigers have hit the ball hard.

UPDATE, 8:29 p.m.: Nova strikes out pesky utility man Ramon Santiago to leave Ordonez stranded at third. Nova has three strikeouts through two innings.

UPDATE, 8:34 p.m.: Sharp double by Teixeira, who’s been needing to drive the ball this series and finally did with a hard-hit ball to the right-center gap.

UPDATE, 8:39 p.m.: That’s a quick hook. Nova retired the last three batters he faced in the second inning, but here’s Phil Hughes out of the Yankees bullpen.

UPDATE, 8:41 p.m.: So Nova pitched 6.1 innings as a reliever this series, and only two innings as a starer. That’s normal.

UPDATE, 9:03 p.m.: The crowd here thought Cano had a two-run double, but Jackson tracked it down for the final out of the third  innings, leaving Granderson and Gardner stranded at first and second. It’s still 2-0 Tigers.

UPDATE, 9:09 p.m.: Playing matchups in the fourth inning. Hughes looked alright to me, but here’s Boone Logan to face Alex Avila, who doesn’t have a hit this series.

UPDATE, 9:12 p.m.: Well, that didn’t work. Avila just singled to right, and now Cory Wade is getting loose.

UPDATE, 9:16 p.m.: CC Sabathia now warming in the bullpen. Maybe try to get two innings out of him to get into the seventh? I’m not sure. We’re well into uncharted water here.

UPDATE, 9:31 p.m.: Gardner up with two outs and the bases loaded in the fourth. No sign of Eric Chavez to pinch hit.

UPDATE, 9:36 p.m.: Pretty good at-bat, and Gardner’s been terrific this series, but he just popped up in foul territory to end the fourth. CC is coming in to pitch the fifth. It’s his first career relief appearance, regular season or postseason.

UPDATE, 9:46 p.m.: The Yankees just announced that Nova left the game with a tight right forearm.

UPDATE, 9:52 p.m.: Victor Martinez makes the Yankees pay for intentionally walking Cabrera. His two-out single scored Austin Jackson — the run was going to score with or without Granderson bobbling the ball — and gave the Tigers a 3-0 lead. Now the Tigers have shifted Kelly to right field and brought Brandon Inge to play third.

UPDATE, 9:58 p.m.: Cano’s eighth postseason home run has the Yankees on the board, 3-1, in the bottom of the fifth.

UPDATE, 10:50 p.m.: Bases loaded for Rodriguez. This is a chance for the heart of the order to make up for a lost series.

UPDATE, 10:56 p.m.: Rodriguez goes down swinging, now it’s Teixeira’s turn.

UPDATE, 11:03 p.m.: Teixeira drew a walk for his first RBI of the series, but Swisher went down swinging and the Yankees still trail 3-2 heading into the eighth.

Jim Leyland had a story to tell, and so he sat at the podium before today’s decisive Game 5 and began speaking before anyone asked a question.

“I have an announcement to make,” he said. “This will explain why you think I’m so old and grumpy and messed up. I got a telegram today from a professor from a prominent university. These are my instructions for tonight… I am supposed to pitch Valverde the first five innings tonight, then I’m supposed to pitch Verlander the last three, quote, ‘the seventh and eighth.’ So that’s where we’re at.”

Everyone, you see, has an approach to Game 5.

What interesting is that Leyland and Joe Girardi are approaching this Game 5 very differently. Leyland has shuffled his lineup again, going with the hot hand in Don Kelly at the top. Girardi has stuck with his regulars, whether they’re struggling or not. Leyland has talked about wanting to get through this game with a select group of rested relievers. Girardi has entertained the notion of every key reliever pitching more than an inning.

Mostly, Leyland and Girardi have differed in the way they plan to use their aces.

Leyland says Justin Verlander won’t pitch at all. In fact, Verlander already threw a bullpen this afternoon so that he’s prepared for a possible ALCS Game 1.

“I’m not going to use Verlander,” Leyland said. “I am not under any circumstances… You can argue till the cows come home, I’m not going to do it. I don’t think it’s a wise decision.”

Girardi has told CC Sabathia to be ready. Girardi’s thinks he could throw a “couple” of innings, and he brought up the idea of going to Mariano Rivera in the eighth inning, saving Sabathia to get the final few outs if Rivera runs out of gas before the end of the ninth.

“You can’t tell when you’re going to go to that move,” Girardi said. “There’s not an exact scenario.”

But would he be hesitant to use Sabathia, wanting to save his ace for Game 1 of the next round?

“You’ve got to win this one,” Girardi said. “(Otherwise) there is no Game 1.”

Here’s Girardi’s pregame press conference.

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• What’s the limit or Rivera tonight? “It’s more pitches than anything,” Girardi said. “You start to get around 35, 40 pitches you start to get into a gray area and you start to worry… That might be a situation where you have CC behind him. It could be something like that.”

• Girardi said it’s “very possible” that he’ll use Dave Robertson and Rivera to pitch the final three innings.

• A.J. Burnett is available if this game gets extremely crazy, but right now the plan is to have him in the rotation should the Yankees advance. “I imagine I would start him,” Girardi said. “I haven’t thought that far along, but yeah.”

• Girardi did not give any sort of pregame speech, and he didn’t ask a player or a member of the coaching staff to do so either. “I kind of watch what our guys are doing, and if they need something, they need something,” Girardi said. “I told you, I thought they were very loose the other day going into Game 4. I’ve seen some of the guys now, and they seem loose to me. I didn’t say anything magical to them in Game 4.”

• Today would have been a bullpen day for Sabathia, but he hasn’t thrown one yet. If this game becomes a blowout, and Sabathia starts to get loose, Girardi said that could be nothing more than a bullpen to prepare for the ALCS.

• Leyland explaining his Verlander decision: “One thing you have to remember, he went a little longer than CC the other night. He also was throwing 100 miles an hour in the eighth inning. He’s also thrown a lot of pitches under stressful circumstances. And I also remind you that Scherzer did a pretty good — he has more rest and he did a pretty good job against the Yankees. So Scherzer would be my first guy tonight if I needed a long guy.”

• Despite Leyland’s vow not to use Verlander, Girardi is approaching this game as if Verlander is available. “I know what Jim said,” Girardi said, laughing. “Sometimes circumstances change. You get into a crazy game and he might be the last guy. I’m not saying he’s going to put him in there, but I’m just saying, you get into an 18-inning game, you’re not putting Wilson Betemit out there, you know what I’m saying?”

Associated Press photos