Teixeira playing with pain, gets night off

BALTIMORE - Mark Teixeira, given a rare night off, was blunt.

"This has been the toughest two or three-week stretch I think I've had in my whole career playing through pain," Teixeira said before last night's game against the Orioles.

Teixeira has been playing since Sept. 1 with a broken little toe on his right foot, suffered Aug. 31 when Oakland's Vin Mazzaro hit him with a pitch at the Stadium. And he said yesterday the deep bruise on the base of his right thumb, incurred diving for a ball Aug. 28 in Chicago against the White Sox, hasn't completely healed.

Coming into last night Teixeira had played in 144 of the Yankees' 147 games, second only to Robinson Cano's 145. While his work in the field hasn't appeared to suffer, he's struggled at the plate of late, seven hits in his last 49 at-bats, including 5-for-30 on this trip.

"The fact is I haven't been producing," Teixeira said. "If you're out there playing hurt and doing well, you can deal with it. It's affecting my swing, it's affecting me running the bases, it's affecting my defense. I have to get healthy."

Pettitte all set

Andy Pettitte, who starts today for the first time since July 18 when he injured his left groin, said he was "100 percent," and more than ready to go.

Sitting out while the team was winning was difficult enough; when the Yankees went into their recent funk, that made it worse.

"This is what my job is," said Pettitte, 11-2 with a 2.88 ERA when he went on the disabled list. "As a man, just as it would be with anyone else, if you can't do your job it's not a good feeling. Add [to] that, you want to be out there with your guys competing and going to battle with them, and you're not able to do that. It's been extremely frustrating."