Andy Pettitte return a starting, just Yankees slump is troubling

Andy Pettitte delivers six innings in return to rotation but Yankees can't solve Anaheim jinx.

They did so not with the kind of joyous anticipation that you would expect from a team that had missed the playoffs last year.

Any postgame victory celebration would be conducted not with champagne, but with “water or Gatorade,” Joe Girardi cracked in the visitors’ dugout before the game. (As it turned out, no celebration was in the offing anyway, after the Yankees lost, 5-2, and the Rangers won in Oakland, 10-3.)

That’s because this team wasn’t constructed to just make the playoffs. It was built to win a World Series. While the Yankees have powered their way to the best record in baseball, the wheels on the express train have begun to wobble down the stretch.

There was more anticipation for how Andy Pettitte would look on the mound in his return to the rotation after missing a start with shoulder fatigue. The Yankees needed Pettitte to show that he was fine, and they needed him to stop the horror show that has accompanied most of the Bombers’ recent appearances at Angel Stadium.

They went 1-for-2. Pettitte allowed three runs in six innings – a quality start – but the Anaheim nightmare continued for the Yankees, who were baffled all night by lefty Joe Saunders save for solo homers by Alex Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui. The Bombers have lost 18 of their last 23 games in Anaheim.

Just a week ago, before they embarked on this six-game West Coast swing, the Bombers were in full swagger mode. Now the swagger has become something of a stagger. With 11 games remaining in the season, the pressure is officially on – though the Yankees’ lead in the American League East remained at five games, four in the loss column, thanks to the Red Sox blowing a six-run lead in Kansas City.

While they’re fighting through a slump, there is no reason for the Yankees to panic or get overly concerned. They will make the playoffs. These are not the meltdown Mets of 2007 and 2008.

There is an easy road to the World Series and a rough one. The Bombers need to plow through this week with the same force they have demonstrated the last three months, or they could find themselves on the hard road – back in Anaheim for a decisive game in a playoff series.

While the Red Sox failed to gain ground last night, the Angels picked up a game on the Yanks in the race for home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. The Bombers’ magic number in the AL East race is now the same as it is in the race for the best record in the league – eight.

The Yankees’ pitching has been the key to their surge in the AL thus far. They will only go as far as their million-dollar arms can carry them.

But as they get to the end of the regular season, their strength has suddenly waned.

So it is up to the pitchers to put the Yankee express back in gear and plow through the final 11 games to clinch the best record in the AL. Getting that choice of the five-game, first round series is vital. They’re going to need to limit their rotation to CC. Sabathia, Pettitte and A.J. Burnett for at least one round.

As successful as the Yankees have been this year, with their walk-off home runs and come-from-behind wins capped with the pies in the face, they haven’t really been tested this way since before the All-Star break.