Yankees baffled by Hellickson as Rays sweep

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A couple of hours before first pitch Sunday, Joe Girardi and Derek Jeter had a general conversation about baseball.

"Jeet and I were talking about it a little bit," Girardi said. "It seems the first in anything in this game is the hardest to get."

Such as the first Yankees win of 2012.

With Jeremy Hellickson in control throughout, the Yankees meekly fell, 3-0, to the Rays, who completed a season-opening three-game sweep.

"That first one in everything at the start of the season is always the toughest," Girardi said afterward. "Whether it's your first hit, your first win as a pitcher or your first win as a club or your first home run. It's always that first one that seems to be the toughest. But this is a resilient club. We'll be fine."

There wasn't much in the way of frustration in the clubhouse regarding the 0-3 start. The game was viewed as the continuation of something representative of the first two games; the Yankees squared up plenty of pitches but didn't have much to show for it against the shifts Rays manager Joe Maddon put on for, it seemed, about half their lineup.

"Everything they did worked out perfectly. Everything we did worked out imperfectly," said Alex Rodriguez, who had one of the Yankees' three hits, all doubles. "You tip your cap and move on to the next city."

The Yankees, who start a three-game series against the undefeated Orioles on Monday night in Baltimore, went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and stranded seven. Hellickson, last year's American League Rookie of the Year, retired nine batters in a row before walking Nick Swisher with two outs in the ninth. Then Fernando Rodney retired Raul Ibañez for the one-out save.

"You definitely get a sense of urgency," Rodriguez said. "Guys are playing hard. It's not like guys are not hustling. Offensively, we're hitting balls that, like Kevin said, we probably hit a dozen balls on the nose that were caught."

Phil Hughes, coming off an impressive spring training, wasn't bad but wasn't long for the afternoon, lasting only 42/3 innings because of a high pitch count. He allowed two runs and five hits and threw 99 pitches.

One of those hits was a third-inning home run by Carlos Peña, who had seven RBIs in the series. The Rays scored in the first inning for the third straight game in the series when Ibañez misplayed Matt Joyce's soft liner to right, resulting in a two-out RBI triple.

"I misread it, the velocity of the ball," said Ibañez, who made an awkward slide in trying to catch the ball, which skipped over his glove and rolled to the wall. "I tried to make a play instead of holding up, and it didn't work out. I screwed it up."

Some brief history for panicky fans of the pinstripes: The last time the Yankees started 0-3 was 1998, when they went 114-48 and won the World Series. It is, as Girardi said Saturday night, a "long, long season."

"It's three games and there's a bunch left, a whole bunch left," said Curtis Granderson, who walked with a limp after fouling a ball off his right calf but said he is OK. "The great thing about this game is we have a chance to go back out there tomorrow."

Said Swisher: "We can't get frustrated because we're not getting results, because we are putting great at-bats together. We are doing things the right way; we just haven't picked up that first 'W' yet."