Yanks' Bats Give Pettitte No Support In Loss To The Jays

Somehow, the New York Yankees are still in this playoff race. And somehow, the Yankees continue to play bad baseball at a time when the can't afford to.

Coming off a weekend in Boston in which the Yankees' pitchers couldn't do anything against the ferocious Red Sox lineup, Andy Pettitte continued his hot pitching lately by giving the Yankees 6.2 innings of one-run ball, but the bats couldn't do anything to back him up, as the Yanks fell to the Blue Jays, 2-0, Tuesday night in Toronto.

"We're playing terrible and it's not good. It's a bad time to be doing it," said Pettitte. "We put ourselves in a horrible position. Obviously we can't have too many more losses."

Pettitte, who came in 3-0 with a 2.13 ERA over his previous six starts, was good from the start, retiring six of the first seven batters he faced through two innings. The only run he gave up through six-plus inning was a solo homerun to Colby Rasmus in the 4th inning.

"I made a terrible mistake to Rasmus and it cost us the ballgame," Pettitte said. "Stupid, just a bad thought process."

Manager Joe Girardi finally pulled the plug on Pettitte, who entered the 7th inning with 101 pitches, after 6.2 innings, giving up one run on six hits while walking two and striking out five on 110 pitches.

"You can't ask for any more," Girardi said. "He was out there on fumes in the seventh."

Shawn Kelley took over for Pettitte and he quickly helped double the Jays' lead when Rajai Davis tagged Kelley for a solo homerun to left field to extend Toronto's lead to 2-0. Girardi didn't want to risk Kelley making things worse, so he sent out David Robertson, who would toss a scoreless 8th thanks to a great relay throw by Brendan Ryan to cut off Adam Lind at the plate to end the inning.

Offensively, the Yankees really helped this game fly by. The closest the Yankees came to actually scoring any runs was in the first inning when they loaded the bases with two outs, but the attempt to score failed after Mark Reynolds struck out to end the inning. The only other time the Yankees had a runner in scoring position was in the second inning.

From there, Blue Jays' starter R.A. Dickey really settled into the game and took over, striking out six Yankees through three innings, and at one point, he retired 15 of 16 hitters. Dickey made it through seven shutout inning, giving up just four hits while striking out a total of eight.

"It was probably the latest action I've had on it, here in particular," said Dickey. "Tonight, and in recent outings in particular, my hard one has had some depth right at the plate and guys are just getting the top of it."

After the loss, Pettitte told reporters that the Yankees need to start playing more urgency with only 11 games remaining this season.

"If there's not, you're playing the wrong sport and you're definitely in the wrong organization," said Pettitte. "We just have to find a way to get a win."

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