BALTIMORE — The amazing thing was, this would be the last time the Yankees would have to face this dilemma — with luck — for the rest of the year. Nothing in the modern game of baseball can be more polarizing — and more fun to chronicle on social media — than the visiting team tied, on the road, in extra innings.
This is what the book says: Save your closer.
“I can’t ask him to go two innings there, which is what you’re looking at if you ask him to start the 10th inning,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said of Andrew Miller, his closer (at least until Monday), which is why the 10th inning of a 0-0 game started with Johnny Barbato on the mound.
When they are whole, the Yankees are one of the few teams that should be immune to this because they have, in essence, three closers: Miller, Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman. As of Monday, they will be whole. This was the last road game before that happens. So, naturally, a choice had to be made.
“It just didn’t work,” Girardi said ruefully.
It didn’t work because Barbato allowed a soft hit and then a legit one, putting runners on the corners with none out. Girardi — who had been ejected from the game for arguing about whether Orioles starter Kevin Gausman was balking or not from the stretch — relayed for Miller then, which is still normally unconventional.
“But we’re losing,” Girardi said, and good for him, it was a bold stroke for which he went unrewarded because Pedro Alvarez lofted a game-winning sac fly on Miller’s second pitch. Ballgame. The Yankees lost 1-0, finished this road trip 2-7, and now go home to 10 games against the Red Sox, Royals and White Sox that could well define who they are this season, and what that season will be.
Chapman returns Monday, against Kansas City, and it’s starting to look entirely possible that the team he comes back to could be barely hanging on to its season by then.
“Very frustrating,” Girardi said. “There’s really no other way to describe it.”
For the Yankees, it was merely another chapter in an aggravating canon of failure that has delivered them this 9-17 record. This time they received masterful starting pitching from Masahiro Tanaka, who threw eight shutout innings, but they could never scratch out a run thanks to their own inabilities to figure out Gausman.
They received what could have been an energizing jolt in the bottom of the ninth inning, when unlikely right fielder Dustin Ackley made a splendid catch off a Matt Wieters drive, snaring the ball just before it hit the fence. An inch higher the ball ricochets off the wall and the Yankees lose in regulation.
“I was hoping that could give us a lift,” Ackley said.
That is what happens when teams hit ruts, the way the Yankees have now hit one. They search for positive signs, and they seek hopeful signals, grasping for anything that will allow them to believe the cause is not already lost.
And no: Bad as things are, the cause is not already lost.
But as a wise man once said, it’s starting to look late early.
“That’s a tough road trip,” Girardi said. “Now we start a long homestand and we have to hope we can turn it around. We have to stop playing poorly.”
That is one of the things that continues to haunt this team. They have earned that record on merit, mostly through a spotty offense, but on Thursday there was also Starlin Castro unforgivably getting picked off second by Wieters in the ninth inning, wandering too far off the bag with Brian McCann at the plate as he was carrying the go-ahead run with him.
These are the things losing teams do. The Yankees keep insisting they aren’t a losing team, that they’re a good team going through a bad time. It’s about time they prove that. Monday, their bullpen will be whole for the first time. It better not be too late.
