Jeter gets closer to 3,000-hit mark

The 3,000-hit watch is down to seven.

Derek Jeter's run-scoring singles in the fifth and eighth innings Sunday brought his career total to 2,993. With four games left on this homestand, the milestone is starting to take a little more shape for Jeter.

"Unless we play a pretty long game, it's still not a one-day thing," he said after the Yankees' 9-1 win over the Indians. "But everyone's talking about it -- when I'm on deck, before the game -- so I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't thinking about it. But I'm not trying to do anything different."

After going 1-for-9 in the first two games against the Indians, games in which the Yankees had 22 total hits, Jeter might have been starting to feel a bit of the pressure to get to 3,000 hits before the homestand ends Thursday.

His first two at-bats Sunday likely did nothing to take away that pressure. He ripped a 3-and-1 pitch to straightaway center in the first off Indians starter Josh Tomlin, but Michael Brantley chased it down at the warning track in front of the 408-foot sign.

In the third, Jeter hit another ball well to right, but Shin-Soo Choo caught that one on the warning track, as well.

His singles -- to right in the fifth and up the middle in the eighth with a drawn-in infield -- weren't exactly mashed, but that didn't matter in the march to 3,000.

SEE PHOTOSDerek Jeter timeline

"I told him, 'You got even,' " Joe Girardi said. "It's good for him. Now we're seven away, and we're getting there."

Girardi had said earlier this week that his advice -- not yet given to Jeter -- was for the Yankees captain to try and savor these moments. "Just enjoy the process and take time to reflect," Girardi said. "That's really not his personality. But you need to enjoy this."

What Jeter claims to enjoy more, of course, are the wins. He benefited from Brett Gardner's table-setting out of the No. 9 hole Sunday and drove Gardner in twice, only Jeter's third multi-RBI game of the season.

"My second and third at-bats, my job was to move the guy over," he said. "We're still trying to win games here, that's first and foremost."

Jeter reiterated how he'd like to get these last seven hits in the next four games, before the Yankees head to Chicago and Cincinnati for interleague play. That wasn't looking like a real possibility until Sunday's pair of singles.

"Yeah, I would love to do it here," he said. "All I can control is having good at-bats, trying to hit the ball hard. We have a few more games here, we'll see what happens."