Yankees face big week: Red Sox, Rays, Mets

Knowing the Yankees host the Red Sox and Rays this week, then will drive over the RFK Bridge to visit the Mets, it's not too surprising that Joe Girardi went to Mariano Rivera in the eighth inning Sunday. The shocker, of course, is how everything played out.

The odds of witnessing a perfect game seem more likely than seeing the Yankees' indomitable closer walk in a run, then give up a grand slam, as he did in a 6-3 loss to the Twins.

Baseball players have no choice but to ride the wave of a 162-game season as evenly as possible, avoiding the highs and lows so they're not mentally spent by July. But there still are those handful of losses every season that are absolute shockers to everyone involved.

To understand how the Yankees view a loss such as this, think of it in these terms: When you step into a cold shower, it's a shock to your body. But slowly, the icy feeling goes away and everything returns to normal.

The reason Girardi gave reporters for asking Rivera for a four-out save for the first time this season was the thinness of the Yankees' bullpen yesterday. But going for the hammer earlier than at any other point this season certainly gave the appearance that Girardi was drooling over the idea of riding into a tough week on a high note.

"You ask people in New York and they probably think his save percentage is 1,000,'' Mark Teixeira said. "That's how good he is. But he's human just like everyone else.''

The goal for Yankees players after these rare Rivera failures has always been to display enough surprise while keeping everything in the context that it's just one loss. That they had the extra wrinkle of their upcoming schedule made for an interesting postgame display in downplaying.

"Who do we play this week?" Alex Rodriguez said when asked about the Yankees' upcoming schedule.

Everybody else in the room knew the answer, of course. But no player seemed terribly concerned about entering this week on such a low note. This is a pretty good bunch when it comes to leaving a loss where it belongs: in the past.

The only Yankee who allowed himself to give the appearance of taking this loss hard was Rivera. That is surprising because he typically is as stoic after his rare blown saves as he is on the mound in those tense moments. Rivera was angry at himself mostly for walking Jim Thome with the bases loaded.

"Unacceptable," Rivera said. "You can't go in and do that."

His shocking failure was on his mind enough that he even referred back to it when talking about the upcoming games against the Red Sox and Rays.

"We're facing our division teams and we have to do our job," Rivera said. "We've been playing good, getting good pitching. Today, the bullpen, the guys in front of me did their job. I didn't do my job."

No one should be crazy enough to suggest that Rivera's shocking failure will be anything more than a one-game mirage, just as no one should read too much into what happens with these Yankees games this week. This is mid-May, after all.

Derek Jeter, for one, put the Yankees' upcoming week into good perspective. "With the teams we're playing, it's pretty energetic here in the Stadium," he said. "Boston, Tampa and then obviously when we play the Mets, it makes it fun for us as players. It should be a fun week."

That the captain would use the word "fun" in the wake of such a stunning loss should demonstrate that they weren't exactly moping around the room. It was a shocking loss, and then everyone moved on.