Starter unable to stop things

NEW YORK -- For a sinkerball pitcher to be effective, he has to have good infield defense. Last night, Derek Lowe's infielders dropped the ball, accounting for four unearned runs in an 11-3 Yankees win over the Red Sox.

Certainly Lowe, who fell to 6-7 while his ERA soared to 5.47, deserved some of the blame. Listening to him after the game, one could have thought it was all his fault. But that wasn't the whole story.

Nomar Garciaparra committed two errors, though one was a first-inning throw that should have been scooped by first baseman Kevin Millar and didn't end up hurting Lowe. But Garciaparra also booted a grounder in the fourth, just before Gary Sheffield's three-run homer.

Millar couldn't handle a Kenny Lofton grounder to start the third, and got an error on that play.

Pokey Reese couldn't turn a double play and Mark Bellhorn, playing third base, turned a double-play ball into a single, although they didn't get errors.

"My job is to make pitches and make sure we don't allow big innings," Lowe said. "This team is going to score runs, you're not going to shut them out. You try to minimize the big inning, but in back-to-back innings [I gave up] three and three."

Lowe has been the victim of 15 unearned runs, which have come in six of his starts. He wasn't getting batters to hit it on the ground as effectively as earlier in the month; of the 10 batters who hit the ball in the air, seven had hits and one had a sacrifice fly. Of the 15 batters who hit it on the ground, only two had hits.

In the second inning, the Sox did pull off a double play after Lowe allowed back-to-back singles to Hideki Matsui and Bernie Williams. But then Lowe allowed an RBI single to Tony Clark.

In the third, Millar's error on Lofton's ball leading off cost Lowe dearly as the Yankees got a Derek Jeter single and a Sheffield sacrifice fly for a run. Later in the inning, Jeter and Alex Rodriguez pulled off a double steal, and scored on a single by Matsui.

In the fourth, Garciaparra booted a Jeter grounder, which would have been the third out, and then Sheffield blasted a three-run homer on a 1-0 count. Just like that, there were seven runs on the board.

"I made a mistake to Sheffield," Lowe said. "I tried to go inside and I left it over the inner half. Tony Clark [a 2-run homer in the fifth], we just tried to throw a cutter inside. I didn't get it where I wanted to, and then it's 9-2 and that's a long way to come back from."

Just before the Clark shot, which landed in the black canvas area of center field, making the former Sox first baseman one of only 18 players to hit it into that area, Reese clanged Jorge Posada's tailor-made double-play grounder. The Sox had to settle for a force rather than having the inning end. Reese claimed the miscue had nothing to do with the splint he wears in his glove to protect his injured thumb, "but I tried to get the ball out of my glove too quickly."

Lowe deserved a better fate. It's hard for any pitcher to see fielders leave outs on the field.

"[We're] a good team," said Lowe. "You have to try to stay positive. They beat you and that's all there is to it. Sometimes when you get beat, you have to take it like a man and move on. That's all you can really do. They beat us in pretty much every facet of the game."

"I'm disappointed in that it really wasn't a competitive game over the last six innings. Your goal as a starting pitcher is to keep your team in the game no matter what the score is."

Lowe didn't do that. But a sinkerball pitcher doesn't need his infielders dropping the ball behind him, either.