Wednesday night, Mike Mussina made like Sam Champion. He certainly didn’t pitch like a champion yesterday afternoon.
Mussina said he turned into an amateur weatherman and helped postpone Game 2 of the ALDS by surfing the Internet, but he couldn’t come up clutch while working in the preferred dry environment. The Yankees righty gave back a 3-1 lead that Johnny Damon handed him with a three-run home run in the fourth, and was on the hook for the 4-3 loss to Detroit that hampers the Yankees’ postseason dreams.
“It’s frustrating,” Mussina said. “I felt like I had control, and then I’d get into a bad count, or the leadoff guy would swing at the first pitch and get one down the line.
“It was just strange and frustrating. It was tough. I felt better than that, and I felt like I threw the ball better than that. Every time they had a chance to score, they scored.”
Mussina, who was the team’s best pitcher for the first two months, allowed single runs in the fifth, sixth and seventh as the feisty Tigers gained a split of the first two games.
“People think because they finished poorly or didn’t play well in Game 1, they’re not a good ballclub,” Mussina said. “That’s foolishness.”
Mussina said Alex Rodriguez’s failure to get a hit with the bases loaded and two outs in the first was a turning point.
“When you get the bases loaded, that’s always a missed opportunity,” Mussina said. “When you get guys on base with nobody out, that’s tough.
“You need to get runs once in a while there. The postseason is low scoring.”
Gary Sheffield agreed, saying Mussina pitched “great” and the game would’ve been totally different had the Yanks plated some runs earlier. Jorge Posada said Mussina did a “helluva” job.
The 37-year-old righty didn’t walk anybody, but he fell into bad counts too often. Carlos Guillen ripped a 2-0 fastball down the right-field line for a game-tying solo homer with one out in the sixth. Mussina called the command of his fastball “sporadic,” locating it one inning but not the next.
Mussina said Posada’s passed ball in the seventh was critical. Posada couldn’t handle a pitch with Brandon Inge squared around following Marcus Thames’ leadoff single. Thames was then sacrificed to third and scored on Curtis Granderson’s tie-breaking triple to left-center.