Jeter's three RBIs help sink Braves

Derek Jeter was one of only four players in uniform Monday to play in the 1996 World Series. Sixteen years later, he's still giving the Braves fits.

Jeter's three RBIs matched a season high, and his go-ahead two-run single with two outs in the fifth helped the Yankees chug toward a 6-2 win over Atlanta, their 10th straight victory. And in case anyone thinks Jeter was going to flip the postgame script after 18 years of major-league baseball, he was typically low-key about a performance that included a sliding play on a grounder in the seventh and another RBI single in the bottom of the inning.

"I hit it where they weren't," Jeter said. "That's pretty much it . . . Sometimes you hit balls well and they catch it and sometimes they find the holes. I was fortunate to find some holes today . . . I think we had a little luck there."

Jeter's fifth-inning grounder up the middle drove in Russell Martin and Jayson Nix with the Yankees' second and third runs. That erased the Braves' 2-1 lead and, perhaps just as important, further unnerved Mike Minor. The lefthander, who had allowed only a walk through the first four innings, faced the minimum until Alex Rodriguez's leadoff single in the fifth.

Jeter has had three RBIs only one other time this season, an 11-5 win over the Angels on April 15.

"The pitch I hit . . . actually I think was a ball," Jeter said of the two-run single. "It was off the plate, but it was too close to take. Fortunately it found a hole, and the same the next time up."

Michael Bourn wasn't as lucky in the seventh. Jeter slid to his left to make the play on Bourn's sharp grounder, getting a forceout at second. On the opposite side of a similar play in the bottom of the inning, Jeter snuck a two-out RBI single past a diving Andrelton Simmons to chase home Chris Stewart from second with the Yankees' fifth run.

"To get him [CC Sabathia] out of the inning, that was a great play that he made," Joe Girardi said. "All around he had a great night tonight and really helped us out."

Vintage Jeter.