Mark Blinch/Reuters
Derek Jeter, left, congratulating Alex Rodriguez, who hit his 650th career homer to tie the game.
TORONTO — Derek Jeter was back on the field playing alongside Alex Rodriguez in a game for the first time all season Monday, facing a Toronto Blue Jays team the Yankees had thrashed and battered in almost every previous encounter in 2013. Jeter managed to remain healthy and Rodriguez even homered in the game. What could possibly go wrong to prevent a win?
Phil Hughes is the short answer, but he had help from Ichiro Suzuki, the usually gifted outfielder who dropped a catchable ball for an error that led to three runs in the fifth inning as the Blue Jays beat the Yankees, 5-2, at Rogers Centre.
There was little that Jeter or Rodriguez could have done when Suzuki needlessly jumped for a deep fly ball off the bat of Edwin Encarnacion. The ball bounced off Suzuki's glove and Jose Reyes scored for the Blue Jays, the first of their runs in that inning.
Had there been a trapdoor in the right-field wall for Suzuki to crawl through, he might have availed himself of the quick exit back to the team hotel.
"If I could have just gone straight home from right field I would have," he said through his interpreter. "I was that embarrassed."
And so after a spirited win Sunday against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Yankees were unable to construct a momentum-building winning streak, even against the last-place Blue Jays.
"Toronto's got a good team," Jeter said. "They're not going to lay down and let us walk over them. They have a lot of pride over there and they have a great team."
But entering Monday's game, the Yankees had won 12 of the 13 games against the Blue Jays this season, including a four-game sweep at Yankee Stadium last week that had helped them pull three and a half games back of the second wild-card spot in the American League.
But R. A. Dickey, who pitched well last week at the Stadium only to lose on an eighth-inning home run by Alfonso Soriano, came back with another laudable effort Monday. He allowed two runs, only one earned, over six and a third innings.
Dickey gave up an opposite-field home run to Rodriguez on an 0-1 pitch in the fifth that evened the score, 2-2. It was Rodriguez's 3rd home run of the season and the 650th of his career. With 10 more he will tie Willie Mays on the career list, and be in position to collect a $6 million bonus from the Yankees.
Hughes was doing fine until Reyes's one-out double in the fifth. Then Ryan Goins singled to right, followed by Suzuki's botched play, which at least would have been a sacrifice fly to drive in Reyes. Then Adam Lind doubled off Hughes to score Goins. Moises Sierra added a sacrifice fly to score Encarnacion, giving the Blue Jays a 5-2 lead.
Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said the error changed the complexion of the inning, noting that Hughes could have escaped having allowed only three runs in five innings. Girardi said, though, that he considered the outing a respectable one, even in an uphill climb in the race for a playoff spot with only 31 games to play.
Hughes, to his credit, did not accept Girardi's bailout, and what else could he really say after falling to 4-13?
"It didn't happen that way," Hughes said. "You can think about hypotheticals, but errors are part of the game and I have to find a way to get out of the inning and battle right there and I didn't do the job. What could have, should have happened is irrelevant."
With four or five potential starts left for each starter, the Yankees may decide to remove Hughes from the rotation in favor of David Huff, who came on in relief and threw three and a third scoreless innings. Huff, who has allowed only one earned run in 122/3 innings, was also instrumental in last week's sweep of the Blue Jays when he threw five scoreless innings in relief of a 4-2 win in the third game of the series.
Girardi said the Yankees had not discussed dropping Hughes from the rotation. But when he was asked if Huff's relief performances had given him something to ponder, Girardi said he was impressed with the left-hander, who made 52 starts for the Cleveland Indians from 2009 to 2012.
"Obviously, you're thinking all the time," Girardi said.
Before the game there was excitement about the return of Jeter, making his third separate return from the disabled list, this time because of a strained right calf muscle. He went 0 for 3 with a walk and hit into a double play, but said he encountered no difficulties with his calf. "It was good," he said. "We lost, but there were no problems."
Before the game Jeter spoke in restrained tones about his latest comeback, saying he was "excited, looking forward to it, anxious, happy."
Whether the 39-year-old Jeter can make it to the end of the season healthy is unknown. He said the recent muscle injuries were, he believes, an indirect result of the broken ankle he sustained last Oct. 13 in Game 1 of the A.L. Championship Series. His inability to do his usual off-season conditioning probably led to quadriceps and calf problems.
"I will try to do as much as I can to keep them strong this last month," he said. "But all I can do is go out and play this last month and hope that everything is fine. I can't change anything that's happened. I wish I had more time to do things, but I didn't and we are where we are. So let's move forward and hopefully there's no more issues."
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