Orioles beat Yankees; A-Rod exits in second inning

BALTIMORE - Alex Rodriguez wasn't about to venture a guess as to what the issue is.

"I'm not a doctor," A-Rod said after last night's 4-3 loss to the Orioles at Camden Yards.

It snapped the Yankees' 10-game winning streak against the Orioles, but that news was overshadowed by what happened in the top of the second inning. Joe Girardi removed Rodriguez, who came out of Sunday's game in Toronto with tightness in his right groin, before the Yankees came to bat because of a similar problem. Ramiro Peña replaced him.

Rodriguez said the tightness feels more like a "cramp" than outright pain and he said the right hip, which was operated on last year, was "fine."

Still, he said he'll meet with Yankees team physician Christopher Ahmad Friday at the Stadium and will talk to the surgeon who performed his surgery, Marc Philippon.

"For the last two days it's felt exactly the same,'' Rodriguez said of the groin, "and once I get warm it gets going. Today it just cramped up. I just couldn't get it quite loosened up.''

Girardi and Rodriguez knew the third baseman was struggling when he failed to move to his left in time to get Adam Jones' RBI single through the hole in the first. "I just locked up," Rodriguez said.

Girardi said A-Rod appeared stiff before batting practice.

"It loosened up when he went through BP, and then he came back in and it was a little stiff," Girardi said. "Then we just pulled him because it just didn't feel like he was moving."

A.J. Burnett (6-4) battled command issues and allowed four runs and eight hits in 62/3 innings.

The Yankees (37-23) went 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position and stranded eight. Orioles starter Jake Arrieta won his major-league debut, allowing three runs and four hits in six innings.

"You definitely miss [Rodriguez] in the lineup," Burnett said. "You see the guys behind him, so you have faith in Nino [Peña] and the guys that play. You don't really get caught up too much during the game because we believe everybody here can play, but it's definitely a different lineup with him in there. You just hope he's all right."

Burnett, who lost for the first time at Camden Yards - he's 5-1 here - had a wild first inning, in which he hit two batters and allowed two hits and two runs.

The Yankees took the lead back in the third, with Derek Jeter doubling in Chad Moeller and scoring on Nick Swisher's sacrifice fly to make it 3-2.

Burnett settled down after his rough first inning, retiring 10 straight after Jones' two-out single in the first. That streak was broken in the fifth as Scott Moore tore into Burnett's 1-and-0 pitch and sent it over the wall in right-center for his first homer of the year, tying it at 3.

The Orioles grabbed the lead back in the sixth. Luke Scott tripled off the wall, just out of the reach of a jumping Swisher, with one out. He scored to make it 4-3 on Jones' double to right-center, all the Orioles (17-43) would need on this night.

But the result was the least significant part of the night, at least from the Yankees' perspective. "We might need to give him a couple days off," Girardi said of Rodriguez.

But after reading body language last night, though, that could be a best-case scenario.