Blue Jays KO Burnett in third as Yanks fail to clinch

TORONTO - The Yankees only could have been so lucky had rain intervened in this outing.

Of course, in the retractable roof-covered Rogers Centre that wasn't going to happen, and A.J. Burnett's second-to-last start of the regular season turned out to be a 21/3-inning debacle. He was shelled for all of the Blue Jays' runs in the Yankees' 7-5 loss last night.

The Yankees' magic number for clinching a playoff berth stayed at one as the Red Sox beat the White Sox, 6-1, in Chicago. The Rays' 4-0 loss to the Orioles in St. Petersburg, Fla., did keep the Yankees (93-64) a half-game behind in the AL East.

"You can't live in the middle of the plate," Burnett said.

Burnett (10-15, 5.33) will start in turn this weekend in Fenway Park, Joe Girardi said. But the manager wouldn't guarantee a postseason start for the righthander, giving an answer open to interpretation (though it still seems unlikely Burnett, who has three years left on an $82.5-million deal and had pitched decently this month until last night, won't get a start).

"We're going to continue to evaluate our guys as we move forward," Girardi said. "Let's get in and then we can make more evaluations."

Though Sunday's victory over the Red Sox all but assured the Yankees of getting in, that doesn't mean there aren't concerns down the stretch, and one of the primary ones was on the mound.

Burnett, who allowed seven hits - including two home runs and not cheapies - wasn't there long, however, unable to make it to the fifth inning for the 10th time this season. To be fair, two of those came in recent weeks when rain shortened his outings, to four innings Sept. 11 and three innings last Wednesday.

Burnett said, "Yeah, I expect to start in the postseason," and referenced - perhaps using a regrettable choice of words - last year's playoffs as evidence why. Girardi also mentioned the 2009 playoffs.

"You saw what I did last year in the postseason," Burnett said. "Everybody says the season doesn't matter here, the postseason does. So there you go."

Indeed, the Yankees might not have won last year's World Series without Burnett, who pitched superbly in winning the critical Game 2, with the Yankees down 1-0 in the Series, at the Stadium. But he wasn't the 1988 Orel Hershiser in the postseason, either, going 1-1 with a 5.27 ERA in five starts.

Burnett said his confidence was "down" after last night's game but that would last until the sun comes up Tuesday.

"The way my season's been, I'm not going to let it affect me," Burnett said. "I've been through way worse nights than tonight and I'm going to have way worse nights than tonight. It's a matter of turning the page and getting over it and realize what we did, what went wrong and fixing it."

Though he put the Yankees in a 7-0 hole, Burnett's teammates made it a game, getting to 7-5 on Mark Teixeira's three-run homer in the seventh off Brian Tallet. Curtis Granderson's two-run shot off Blue Jays starter Marc Rzepczynski in the fifth made it 7-2. But the 25-year-old lefthander otherwise had his way with the Yankees over five innings, allowing two runs and four hits and striking out a career-best nine, at one point striking out six straight batters.

"His ball was moving everywhere," Teixeira said.

Burnett's, not so much.

"It's something we have to keep working on, definitely," Girardi said. "He got hit hard tonight, there's no doubt about it. You just have to keep working at it, there's no other way to approach it."