NEW YORK — Joe Girardi’s day started with a closed-door powwow with the New York Yankees’ front-office braintrust before Monday afternoon’s game.
But this wasn’t the same as Willie Randolph getting called on the carpet by New York Mets owners on Memorial Day. It was “a routine meeting we have every 10 days or so,” the manager said. It raised eyebrows only because Girardi was late to his pregame news briefing.
“I’ve been a little busy,” he joked.
The Yankees don’t feel the same sense of shame as the Mets did about their mediocre record, even though they are having as much trouble scaling the standings. Girardi’s job is not in any jeopardy.
That doesn’t mean the Yankees aren’t getting frustrated. They start to think they’re on a roll, then they have games like Monday’s maddening 3-2 loss to the lowly Kansas City Royals.
Mariano Rivera allowed a ninth-inning home run to red-hot Jose Guillen to snap a 2-2 tie. The Yankees loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth, but Melky Cabrera grounded out against Kansas City closer Joakim Sosa. The Yankees were 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
“It’s not fun,” Yankee outfielder Johnny Damon said. “This is pretty frustrating.”
The Yankees (32-32) are at .500 for the 22nd time this season after splitting the four-game series against the young Royals (25-39); Kansas City came in having lost 15 of their previous 17. The Yankees wasted a superb outing by Mike Mussina, who went eight innings and allowed only a two-run home run to Miguel Olivo.
Then it was on to the airport for a six-game road trip to Oakland, Calif., and Houston, starting Tuesday night. Shortstop Derek Jeter, for one, is confident the Yankees will get it going, but Mussina doesn’t buy the idea that a run to the postseason is inevitable just because the Yankees have done it before after slow starts.
“We’ve been saying that for a month, It’s inevitable, it’s inevitable,’ and we’re still roughly a .500 team,” he said. “If it’s inevitable, it better start soon. We really did something impressive last year to come back and get to the postseason being this kind of team at August 1. I don’t want to have to try to do that again.”
Mussina was outstanding in his bid to become the AL’s first 10-game winner. He gave up seven hits and walked none while striking out three in his longest outing since he went nine on May 31, 2006, at Detroit.
Olivo homered on a hanging curve to snap a scoreless tie in the seventh. But the Yankees tied it at 2 in the bottom of the inning on Alex Rodriguez’s two-run blast off Royals starter Luke Hochevar, the first overall pick in the 2006 draft.
Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
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