Devil Rays 10
Yankees 7
Maybe Orlando Hernandez figured he could beat the patsy Devil Rays with a bad back. Maybe he did his team a disservice by trying.
After a healthy start to his season, El Duque showed up last night as Ill Duque, and gave the Yankees, 10-7 losers, absolutely no chance to extend their winning streak to eight.
It turns out that Hernandez waited until he had surrendered six runs in the first inning before informing Joe Torre and Mel Stottlemyre that he had felt tightness in the middle of his back while warming up.
Then, in the clubhouse, Hernandez stubbornly and vehemently denied there was anything wrong and engaged in a contentious exchange with a reporter attempting to find out the truth.
Welcome to El Duquegate.
“He thought it would loosen up,” Torre said. “It just didn’t loosen up.”
Asked when he found out about it, Torre said: “After he had pitched the first inning. But then he felt he could get it out of there, so we sent him out for the second inning.”
Stottlemyre was unable to sense anything wrong during warmups. If Torre was peeved that Hernandez kept mum, he hid it well.
“If that were the case,” Stottlemyre said, “I wish he would have said something to us sooner.”
Torre tried to be rational. “He’s done this before where he feels the obligation to go out and pitch,” Torre said. “That’s his job. This is his day.”
It was a short day. Hernandez (8 earned runs) was showering before the end of the second inning after yielding home-run bombs to Chris Gomez and Steve Cox, and not even the reborn Bronx Bombers (league-leading 58 homers) could overcome a 9-0 deficit against Joe Kennedy.
Hernandez, as is his custom, bent over backwards assuring the media through his translator that his back was not the problem.
“That’s no reason for what happened,” he said. “I got hit, and that’s the end of it. There’s no excuse and no justification. They scored runs on me and that’s it.”
Torre was asked whether this was anything to be concerned about. “It just seems to be muscular,” he replied. “We hope it isn’t, we don’t anticipate it is, but we’ll wait until tomorrow to see how it shakes out.”
The Yanks fell four games behind the Red Sox, 8-2 winners over the A’s.
Superb relief pitching from Sterling Hitchcock, back for his season debut after back woes, and Ramiro Mendoza kept the Yanks in the hunt. Following a three-run blast in the sixth by resurgent Nick Johnson, the Yanks clawed to within 9-7 after catcher Toby Hall pounced on a wild pitch that had bounced in front of the plate from Victor Zambrano and threw low into center field, allowing Jason Giambi to score.
Torre didn’t ask John Vander Wal to pinch hit against the right-hander and Rondell White lined to right to end the seventh.
“We had too high a mountain to climb,” Torre said.
Mount Duque.
Here’s a look at the Yankee righty’s unsightly pitching line:
IP 1 2/3
H 6
R 8
ER 8
BB 2
K 1
HR 2
ERA 43.20