Lester holds Yankees in check, 7-3

Making the postseason still is much more inevitable than not for the Yankees.

But after winning the first two games of a four-game series against the Rays this past week, they haven't done much to inspire confidence in a suddenly jittery fan base. The Yankees dropped their fourth straight game Saturday , falling to the Red Sox, 7-3, at the Stadium.

"It's not uncomfortable [in the clubhouse] right now," Curtis Granderson said of the Yankees, who fell 11/2 games behind the Rays.

And a look at the big picture shows that the Yankees (92-63), who have lost 13 of their last 19 and had their lead over the Red Sox (86-68) cut to 5 ½ games, need not be in panic mode. They have a magic number of three to clinch a postseason berth, and a victory tonight would put the number at one.

Additionally, of the six pitchers they used yesterday, only Joba Chamberlain is assured of a postseason roster spot.

"Sometimes you're going to go through some bumps," Joe Girardi said. "But we're still in a good spot. We have seven games left to play and our club needs to win three games."

But it has not been a good week for the Yankees, who began it with such promise after a frustrating 3-6 trip against the Rangers, Rays and Orioles.

"You can't make too much of four games," Girardi said. "You take the previous five games [in which the Yankees won four of five], we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. That's baseball. You go through those ups and downs and you don't evaluate your club on a short-term period."

But in this period, the starting pitching hasn't been very good. The Yankees have been outscored 34-16 in the last four games, with CC Sabathia, Andy Pettitte and Ivan Nova pitching ineffectively (A.J. Burnett allowed one run in three innings Wednesday before a thunderstorm ended his night).

Nova (1-1, 4.54) had pitched well in his two previous starts, for the most part, sunk by one bad inning in each of them. But the rookie wasn't very good yesterday, struggling with his command throughout his 42/3-inning outing and allowing four runs, four hits and three walks.

"He lost the strike zone," Girardi said, referring to a three-run third that made it 3-0.

"It's simple. It starts with our starting pitching," said Alex Rodriguez, who hit his 611th homer, a solo shot in the ninth off Hideki Okajima. "They set the tone for us. They always have."

A-Rod wasn't throwing the pitchers under the bus. Jon Lester retired the first 12 Yankees and held them hitless for 51/3 innings before Francisco Cervelli's sinking liner to left couldn't be handled by Daniel Nava. Lester (19-8, 2.96) showed why he deserves to be in the conversation for the American League Cy Young Award, allowing two hits in seven shutout innings, striking out eight and walking three.

"Playing good defense, grinding out some good at-bats and some timely hitting," A-Rod said, ticking off other things the Yankees have done well when they've won. "We haven't done any of that."

With the Yankees trailing 6-0, Granderson hit a two-run homer off Daniel Bard in the eighth. It was his 13th homer in his last 40 games and 23rd of the season.

Rodriguez's homer was his 28th of the season, moving him within two of hitting at least 30 home runs in 13 straight seasons.

"The bottom line is we need to win games, we need to play better," Girardi said. "Things could be a lot worse. We could be on the other side of this, too. But you still need to win games."