Blue Jays shutout Yankees, 3-0

By David Waldstein
September 19, 2011

TORONTO — Derek Jeter was one of three regulars given the day off Sunday as the Yankees completed a challenging 11-day, four-city trip with a 3-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. Normally, Jeter wants to play every day, but Manager Joe Girardi said Jeter and several of his teammates had showed signs of fatigue.

After a few days of struggling to hit the ball out of the infield, Jeter finally admitted that the hectic schedule of rainouts, rain delays and West Coast travel made Sunday a welcome respite.

“At this point in the season, any opportunity helps,” Jeter said, “especially with the schedule we’ve had.”

But with 11 games remaining in the regular season, Jeter, even with a 3-for-18 dip in his last four games, has been on the doorstep of .300 for a month now as he has clawed back from a dismal first half to post a more respectable .292 batting average.

Considering that he was batting .257 on July 7 (after the first 66 games of the season), with 2 home runs and 12 doubles, his second half has been something of an eye-opener. That includes a torrid stretch from July 9, when he went 5 for 5 and reached 3,000 career hits, to Sept. 4, when he had two hits, including a home run, and five runs batted in. During that 46-game period, he hit .358 and had eight doubles, three triples and three home runs, with 31 runs and 32 R.B.I.

During the early part of the season, Jeter did not look like the career .314 hitter he was coming into the season, and there were questions about whether his days as a perennial .300 hitter were behind him.

The contentious off-season contract negotiations reflected a difference in opinion in how the Yankees and Jeter saw his abilities over the next several years. Observers outside the organization wondered if his .270 batting average last season was a sign of the natural decline of a shortstop who would turn 37 early in the 2011 season.

But despite his improved numbers in the second half, and his recent flirtation with .300, Jeter says he has not had anything to prove as he has raised his level of play closer to his past standards.

“I don’t think I have to prove anything,” he said. “That’s not why I’m playing. I’m playing to win. I’m not out there thinking about proving anyone right or wrong. We’re trying to win games. There’s too much to think about if you’re trying to prove people right or wrong.”

Even though he finished last season with a .270 average, Jeter has hit .298 with 33 extra-base hits and 86 runs since last Sept. 18. But he said that number in itself did not tell him anything about what he could do to help the Yankees win games.
“Maybe it tells you something,” he said. “I don’t need anyone to tell me anything. I know what I can do.”

The Yankees headed back to New York with a four-and-a-half-game lead over the Boston Red Sox in the American League East, with Mariano Rivera looking to earn his record-setting 602nd career save, which would follow Jeter’s much-celebrated run toward 3,000 hits.

Also on the radar of individual accomplishment is C. C. Sabathia’s bid for his 20th victory. Another possibility could be Jeter’s chasing .300. With Sunday’s day off — Jeter was joined by Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson while the short-handed Yankees managed only five hits in the shutout — a more refreshed Jeter could still have a shot at .300 with a big finish, not that he would ever claim to be focused on such a goal.

“I’m not running to the scoreboard to see what my batting average is every day,” he said. “We’re trying to win games, and I have a job to do. Sometimes that means hitting a ground ball to second base to move a runner over, and if that’s what I’m supposed to do, that’s what I’ll try to do. Everyone would like to be hitting over .300, but we’re trying to win games, so whatever is going on in the game dictates what you’re going to do.”

There have been several theories regarding Jeter’s second-half improvement. Girardi has said he thinks it has been because of Jeter’s shedding the pressure of reaching 3,000 hits. Others think the time he spent on the disabled list in June with a calf strain actually rejuvenated him. Jeter says it was the time he spent with the minor league hitting instructor Gary Denbo, working on staying back on pitches while in the batter’s box.

Jorge Posada said: “After coming back from the D.L., I think that helped him a lot. Mentally, it helped him more than anything. He’s the guy that we follow in every sense of the word. When he gets on base, everything kind of trickles down.”

INSIDE PITCH: With Sunday’s loss to the Blue Jays, the Yankees finished their trip 4-6, but added two games to their lead over the Red Sox in the American League East. Freddy Garcia allowed two solo home runs to Adam Lind in the loss and was taken out of the game before Lind came up again in the fifth inning with two runners on base.

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