Jeter: They deserved to sweep us

As captain of the New York Yankees, Derek Jeter knows full well he’s going to keep hearing the same question that the Red Sox heard all those years about the Yankees - Are they in your head?

Thursday night, the Yankees lost a game they thought they had in control with their ace on the mound. They led 3-1 in the eighth inning and C.C. Sabathia was in control.

But manager Joe Girardi showed more faith in his pitcher approaching 120 pitches than he did his bullpen and the Red Sox rallied for three runs in the eighth for a 4-3 win and a sweep of the three-game series. The Yankees have lost ALL eight meetings this year with Boston.

So now, after losing three times to Boston in April at Fenway, twice in May and now three times in June, are the Red Sox in their heads?

“Nah, I wouldn’t say that,” Jeter said in a tone acknowledging that he was prepared for that very question. “Like I’ve said before, we weren’t thinking what happened in the first five games when we came in here. I mean, yeah, if you want to talk about these three, it’s disappointing that we lost all three. You really try not to group things together. Yeah, we haven’t beaten them but we weren’t thinking about what happened in April when we came in here.”

Jeter did admit that the Yankees are just not performing in the clutch against their rivals, something they have been known for over the course of the rivalry, which marked its 900th lifetime meeting at Fenway Thursday.

“That’s the bottom line, today we were in a good position to win but they came back. They deserved to sweep us. We didn’t really play too well,” Jeter said. “We battled back, scored those three runs but then they had that big inning there. C.C. pitched a great game but they had some good at-bats there in that eighth inning.”

Then there was the perspective of Sabathia, who gave up a lead-off hit to Nick Green to open the fateful eighth. Then came a 10-pitch at-bat to Dustin Pedroia that drove his pitch count over the 120 threshold.

“It was a tough at-bat,” Sabathia said. “I was just trying to make a pitch. I hung a changeup (to Pedroia), gave up a hit to Nick Green and he made me work and wound up throwing a high change up.”

Then Joe Girardi made a visit to the mound before allowing his workhorse to face J.D. Drew.

“He just said go get this guy,” Sabathia said. “He never said this was your last guy or anything like that. He just said, ‘Go get this guy.’ And he ended up getting a base hit.”

Drew’s base hit made it a one-run game, 3-2, and ended Sabthia’s night. Alfredo Aceves entered but couldn’t stop the bleeding or the Red Sox, who rallied for the win.

“It’s disappointing, coming in here and getting swept after playing so well,” Sabathia said. “We just have to come back (Friday) and forget about this and play good. This is big league baseball. And we know we have over 100 games left. We’ll go out and continue to play hard and see what happens.”

Another gut-wrenching loss for the Yankees, who have lost nine straight to Boston for the first time in 97 years.

“Well, none of (the losses) are easy,” Girardi said. “We’ve went through some tough games with these guys where we felt we’ve had a chance to win and we just haven’t gotten it done for a lot of different reasons. There’s never an easy one.

“You know the people in here,” Girardi continued. “They’re not going to quit. We’re going to show up tomorrow. We’re going to show up the next day. It hasn’t been fun for us against the Red Sox. The big picture is we have a long way to go.”