NEW YORK -- I'm sure buried somewhere within the sheaf of binders and heat maps on Joe Girardi's desk are statistics to back up the use of infield shifts, even against a weak-hitting team such as the Oakland A's. And I have no doubt that the numbers probably show that shifts save more hits and runs than they cause. Why else would so many baseball teams be so shift crazy?
But the shift certainly cost the Yankees in the second inning on Tuesday night when Yonder Alonso, the No. 8 hitter in Oakland's lineup, cued one the other way into left field with the Yankees' infield shifted over toward right. In a normal configuration, Alonso's grounder would have been a routine groundout -- and the end of the inning. But with the Yankees in a shift, it became a two-out single, moving Jed Lowrie, who had singled earlier, to third, from where he scored easily when Marcus Semien lined a clean single to left.
The run became huge when the Athletics tied the game in the sixth on a leadoff triple by Danny Valencia -- a gapper that went off the glove of a charging Brett Gardner in left center -- and a ground ball single through a drawn-in infield by Lowrie. That sent the game into the eighth inning even at two and deprived Michael Pineda -- who pitched well (6 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 7 K's) -- of the chance for a win.
It also sent the punchless Yankees, who scored on a first-inning RBI single by Alex Rodriguez and a Carlos Beltran sacrifice fly in the fifth, into extra innings for the first time this season.
They lost 3-2 when reliever Johnny Barbato, their fifth pitcher of the night, allowed a double to Lowrie and an RBI single to Mark Canha in the 11th.
And during the last five innings, they had just one hit -- a single by Chase Headley, later erased when pinch runner Jacoby Ellsbury got caught stealing -- from their last 17 batters.
