Bronx, N.Y., May 11, 2011 –You can expect to see and hear plenty of sources lamenting the continued struggles of the Yankee offense Thursday after their 4-3 loss in 11 innings to Kansas City Wednesday night. I get that two runs in regulation is disappointing, and three in 11 innings hard to take. And that the team struggles to score when it doesn’t hit home runs.

But at that point I think the Wednesday struggles took a sharp turn away from how the team has played lately. They have won and lost games for weeks now with hit totals like four, five, and six. This loss was not more of the same; it opened up a whole new vein of slag in misfire mountain. And nothing can make the futility stand out any greater than to compare their game to that of the visiting Royals.

The KC team stroked all of four hits, all in different innings. They scored in those four innings, and did not score in the rest. The Yankees collected 12 hits in eight different frames, and scored in just three of them. The team had a 2-0 lead with no outs in the third, then failed to push another run across in the third through the ninth despite reaching on seven hits, five walks and a hit by pitch. They had two hits in 13 tries with men in scoring position all night.

A.J. Burnett was very good – again – allowing just one hit and one run while striking out six through seven innings. He handed a 2-1 lead to his bullpen, but it was impossible not to feel the futility of the intervening innings and wonder if the team would be made to pay for the ongoing ineptitude. Following Curtis Granderson’s leadoff third inning home run, the list of lamentations stretches through to the end: a hit and two walks in the third; a hit in the fourth; a hit by pitch in the fifth; two hits in the sixth; a hit and two walks in the seventh; a hit in the eighth; a hit and walk in the ninth. No runs in any of them.

There were highlights. Jorge Posada stroked the third straight hit to start the second for an rbi on a rare two-hit night. Curtis Granderson’s cannon shot to left center gave him the major league lead in home runs, he made a fine running catch in the fourth, and he kept the Yanks in this game one inning longer when his two-out 10th-inning single tied the Royals the first of two times they took a lead. Burnett was dominant; Gardner had two hits and a walk.

That was it. Buddy Carlyle began both the top of the tenth and 11th innings by issuing a walk; each led to a run. It was inspiring when Grandy’s two-out hit tied matters in a game where the team was one pitch from defeat. But there were no comebacks when Eric Hosmer’s short sac fly scored the Royals’ fourth run in the 11th.

To truly understand how futile a night it was, I confess to this. The bottom of the 11th was the best inning of the night. No wasted hits, walks, errors. After four hours and 31 minutes, finally:

A Clean Inning

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!