The score was tied at five in the fifth inning yesterday as Pat Mahomes jogged in from the Met bullpen to face Jorge Posada with two out and two Yankees on base.
“The 3-1 pitch, I threw him a fastball inside and [he fouled it] to make it 3-2,” said Mahomes, recounting the at-bat. “I’d wanted to throw the same pitch [on 3-2], but I didn’t to throw the same pitch. [Catcher] Todd [Pratt] wanted to throw a change-up, which probably would’ve been a better pitch. I felt like I could get it past him, but I didn’t execute.”
So despite not wanting to throw a fastball, Mahomes did.
“I didn’t execute,” Mahomes said following the Mets’ 13-5 loss to the Yankees. “And that was the ballgame. He hit the home run.”
The three-run jack by Posada on a 3-2 pitch opened an 8-5 Yankee lead. Besides giving up two runners inherited from starter Bobby Jones, Mahomes allowed two runs of his own, which included another homer -Derek Jeter’s in the sixth.
“He’s an emotional guy,” pitching coach Dave Wallace said of Mahomes. “He gets real high, you see it in his demeanor. He makes a mistake and he tries too hard. You can see that. He made a mistake to Jeter.”
Mahomes added, “I was really fired up. Maybe that got to me. Maybe I just wanted to throw one by him instead of locating like I should’ve.”
Dennis Cook replaced Mahomes in the top of the seventh and looked exasperated as the Yankees put up four straight hits off of him.
“They hit ’em where they ain’t,” Cook said. “I couldn’t do anything about it.”
The 37-year-old lefty ended up going two-thirds of inning and giving up four runs, all earned, on six hits. It was Cook’s 29th appearance of the season. Has Cook been used too much?
“I don’t think so,” said Wallace.
Wallace and Valentine didn’t want to turn to Mahomes until after the fifth inning, but they couldn’t wait any longer as Jones struggled.
“I wanted to be in that game in that situation,” Mahomes said.
Mahomes said that if he could’ve pitched better the Mets may have won.
“Obviously, they didn’t get as many guys out as we were hoping as quickly as we were hoping they might,” manager Bobby Valentine said.