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Yankees: Jeter is the Bigger of Two Losses

NJ Star-Ledger, May 12, 2000

By Colin Stephenson

NEW YORK -- The Yankees lost the final game of their homestand to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays last night, 1-0, before 14,292. The game was the least significant of their losses.

Derek Jeter, the two-time All-Star shortstop, one of the main cogs in the Yankees machine, left the game after the second inning with a strained abdominal muscle on his left side. He will miss the weekend series that begins tonight in Detroit against the Tigers and manager Joe Torre said putting the 25-year-old on the disabled list is a possibility, although not one the team needs to rush into.

"I think we have to wait through the weekend and see how it responds to treatment," Torre said.

Jeter actually hurt himself Wednesday as he took batting practice in the cage before that night's game eventually was rained out. Battling a slump that had him hitless in three games and 5-for-32 entering last night's game, Jeter had taken extra swings with hitting instructor Chris Chambliss on Wednesday.

"I probably took too many," said Jeter, a large ice pack on his side.

The area "tightened up," he said, and he informed Torre, who watched him closely in the game. On his first at-bat last night, he flied out to right, aggravating the injury.

"When I swung (on the flyout), I felt a sharp pain," Jeter said.

Instead of coming out of the game immediately, Jeter returned to the field for the top of the second inning, and managed to make a spectacular play -- backhanding Vinny Castilla's grounder in the hole and leaping and twisting to throw to second for a forceout of Jose Canseco. That acrobatic play surely could not have helped his condition. Jeter said he felt the side tug on the play, but it hurt more on the swing. He admitted he probably should not have gone back into the field.

After the second inning, Jeter went into the clubhouse and Torre followed him.

"There was no discussion," Torre said. Clay Bellinger took over at shortstop to start the third inning.

Without Jeter, the Yankees ended up wasting a marvelous performance by Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who turned in his best performance in nearly a month, pitching a complete game and giving up only a solo homer by Fred McGriff in the seventh. As good as Hernandez was, though, Tampa Bay starter Steve Trachsel (3-2) was better, giving up no runs on three hits over seven innings. Trachsel, who took Dave Eiland's turn in the rotation after the rainout, won his second straight 1-0 game, beating Hernandez five days after beating Boston's Pedro Martinez, 1-0, on Saturday. He now has 17 consecutive scoreless innings.

The 22-10 Yankees did threaten a couple of times. Bellinger ripped a curveball to the wall in left in the sixth with a man on, but Greg Vaughn leaped and caught the ball at the top of the wall.

"I didn't crush it, or anything, but I thought it had a chance," Bellinger said.

Scott Brosius led off the eighth with a warning track flyout to center off reliever Albie Lopez, and Bernie Williams, with Paul O'Neill on in the ninth, flied to the track in right off Lopez, but that was it.

Now, the Yankees must figure out how to patch the enormous hole in the lineup vacated by Jeter, at least for the weekend.

"You're not going to replace Derek Jeter with someone like Derek Jeter," Torre said. "You just have to find a way to win without him."

Jeter has been very durable in his five-year career, having gone on the DL only once before, in June 1998, with -- coincidentally -- a pulled abdominal muscle suffered on a checked swing. That one was on the right side, he recalled.

Jeter is more frustrated to be missing time now, because as he said, "you work hard to try and correct things, and ... you can't correct things when you're on the bench, watching."

He also wasn't enthusiastic about the possibility of going on the DL.

"If it was up to me, of course not," he said. "But you've got to talk to the mastermind (Torre). Only time will tell. It's a tricky situation. If you play too soon, then you could miss a lot more time."

Notes:The options to replace Derek Jeter at shortstop depend on how long he is out of action. Either Clay Bellinger, who already has filled in for Scott Brosius at third and Chuck Knoblauch at second, or Wilson Delgado will play in Detroit over the weekend.

Monday is an off-day and the team returns home for a two-game series against the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday. If Jeter goes on the DL, that probably means Alfonso Soriano will be called up for the second time. Soriano, a highly touted prospect, came up from Triple-A Columbus when Brosius was hurt earlier, but had trouble defensively and did not hit. He was returned to Columbus when Brosius came off the DL and is hitting .226 with two home runs and four RBI in 14 games there. He has played 10 games at shortstop and four at second base, and has made four errors.

Bellinger, primarily a third baseman, said he played shortstop for the first seven years of his career and is comfortable there. He last played short at Columbus in 1997.Joe Torresaid he was happy with the work of starter Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.

"Duque was great," Torre said. "He threw a fastball to (Fred) McGriff and he hit a home run. When somebody like McGriff gets you, you can't be embarrassed by that."

Hernandez said he was happy with the way he pitched, including the 2-1 pitch he made to McGriff in the seventh inning that turned into the game-winning homer to right-center field.

"I was happy with the location of the pitch," Hernandez said of the fastball away. "It just didn't move."

"We wanted it away, off the plate," catcher Jorge Posada said of the pitch. "It just caught too much of the plate.Torre was askedwhy last night's makeup game was not scheduled for the afternoon.

"I guess they thought they would draw more people," he said. "I think we'd all rather play during the day, but when I didn't have to wake up at 7:30 this morning, I thought it was a good idea to play at night."