BALTIMORE – Thirty minutes after the Orioles spanked another neophyte Yankee pitcher last night at Camden Yards, Yank manager Joe Girardi sat in the middle of a room where his coaches dress.
Pregame, the coaches use the room to go over scouting reports and charts. Postgame, they eat off paper plates with plastic forks and talk.
Now they sat in a semi-circle around Girardi wearing blank expressions as he spoke.
Among the topics on the table had to be how to get Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes untracked before they throw the Yankees off the rails.
And after that, how to wake up the Yankees’ Dead Bat Society.
Kennedy and the dormant bats combined to send the Yankees to an embarrassing 6-0 loss to the Orioles in front of 41,776 – a defeat that stretched the losing streak to three for the 9-10 Yankees.
Kennedy didn’t give the Yankees a chance and the bats were smothered by the very pedestrian lefty/righty duo of Brian Burres and Jim Johnson.
“It’s hard to pitch the way he pitched,” Girardi said of Kennedy, who seemingly was behind all 17 of the hitters he faced.
“There were a lot of three-ball counts, and you can’t pitch that way.”
After Hughes lost Friday night when he surrendered five runs and nine hits in 51/3 innings, Kennedy’s challenge was to pick up his buddy and fellow Generation Trey member.
Instead, Kennedy dropped Hughes on his head.
“To me, it looks like he is not aggressive enough,” Girardi said of Kennedy, who lasted 21/3 innings, allowing four runs, five hits and walking four.
“We need to get him back to where he was last year. It’s frustrating, but you have to fight your way out.”
Kennedy, 23, and Hughes, 21, were question marks when the season opened because of their youth and inexperience (16 combined starts).
Nineteen games into the season, the questions have been answered with negative responses.
They are a combined 0-5, and have people wondering if the major leagues are the place for them to get straightened out.
“It feels big because it’s the big leagues,” said Kennedy, who is 0-2 with a 9.64 ERA.
In 14 innings he has given up 19 hits and 13 walks.
“We are going through it together. They are patient with us. We have proven we can pitch here.”
But that was last year, and in the Yankee universe that may as well been a decade ago.
For all the talk of developing home-grown arms like Kennedy and Hughes, the organization’s goal of winning a World Series hasn’t changed.
Watching how Kennedy and Hughes pitch lately leads you to believe they aren’t ready.
Working in their favor is that the two best Triple-A starters are $46 million bust Kei Igawa and Darrell Rasner, who is a better fit in long relief.
As for the bats, they were awful. Burres, a 7-9 career pitcher when the night started, allowed five hits and four walks in 52/3 innings.
Johnson retired 10 of the 11 batters he faced.
The Yankees didn’t get runner into scoring position after the third and went 1-for-5 in the clutch. During the three-game losing streak, they are batting a putrid .150 (3-for-20) with runners in scoring position.
“We are too good of a team to not be able to do that,” Johnny Damon said of failing to get a runner to second across the final six innings. “We need to figure things out.”