Pitching failures don't bode well for fall

The Yankees were given an unwanted glimpse into their worst-case scenario for October baseball last night, and it looked as scary as you might imagine.

In the Yankees' 6-4, 10-inning loss to the Oakland Athletics, their ace couldn't hold a late lead, two of their most trusted bullpen arms faltered and the manager's key tactical decision backfired.

Of course simply because those supposed "sure things" combined to all go wrong for the Yankees on a late August night, doesn't mean they're all going to go wrong on an October night. But what we saw Wednesday night was that it could happen, and that isn't a good thought for the Yankees.

With five weeks remaining in the regular season, we've reached the stage where everything that happens on a nightly basis is viewed through the prism of the postseason. And along those lines, the Yankees have to do their best to bottle this night up and bury it somewhere, never to be seen again.

Rafael Soriano comes away as the loser, having given up the go-ahead, two-out, three-run home run to Coco Crisp in the 10th inning. The laser of a home run into the rightfield stands brought boos from the crowd.

But Soriano never would have been in the game if only CC Sabathia did exactly what he's expected to do as the ace, which is make a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning stand. It's something he's done many times, including in the postseason, but on this night he couldn't get the biggest outs when he needed them.

With a runner on second and one out, Sabathia left an 0-and-2 pitch -- his 100th pitch of the night -- over the plate to Scott Sizemore, and Oakland's No. 9 hitter ripped it down the leftfield line for a score-tying double. Sabathia shook his head as he walked off the mound and later said the loss "was totally my fault."

But you can easily make the case that Sabathia shouldn't have been in the game at that time considering Joe Girardi's strong tendency to manage by the numbers.

In his three-plus years as Yankees manager, he's put great weight in pitcher-batter matchups as well as how batters have fared off pitchers earlier in the game. And in this case, the numbers were clearly in favor of not letting Sabathia face Sizemore.

Sizemore came into the game 3-for-7 against Sabathia, then doubled in the third and hit a single in the fifth. And when he came up in the eighth with a runner on second representing the tying run, Girardi came out of the dugout and walked to the mound. But it wasn't to pull Sabathia.

Girardi said his trip to the mound was simply to tell Sabathia, "It's your game. Let's go. Let's go get this guy." And for his part, Sabathia said he never thought he was coming out of the game.

But should he have come out? If this happened in October, that's a question that would be debated until the next game was played. And a wrong outcome obviously has major implications. Not that anyone in the Yankees clubhouse was interested in engaging such scenarios. Not with 35 more regular-season games to play.

"I guess you could play the would've, could've, should've game," Nick Swisher said, "but that's really not my style."

In this quasi-dress rehearsal of an October game, everything went wrong. But the good news -- the only good news on a night like this -- is simply that they'll get another practice run this afternoon. Coming off this loss, they're thankful for that. Said Sabathia: "We got a lot of games left to right the ship."