Key factor in loss

When the curses came out, barely hidden behind his glove, Jonathan Papelbon didn't yet realize what was wrong. Sure, he knew he hadn't pitched well. He knew he - and Hideki Okajima - had cost the Red Sox a golden chance to pick up a game on the Yankees. But it wasn't until after Friday night's meltdown in an 8-7 loss that he determined what had gone wrong.

"I think it was more of a mental issue," Papelbon said before yesterday's rematch, won by the Sox, 10-1. "My head wasn't in the game really as well as it has been. You know, it's just one of them things, where you get in the situation, you've got to be fully involved. Mentally, I wasn't completely there. I wasn't 100 percent dead-on like I usually am."

Strange, for a game against his team's archrival, a team within striking distance in the American League East, with the end of the season nearing. But then Papelbon looked at the four reporters surrounding him at his locker, and he tried to put the feeling into terms they would understand.

"It's just like you," he said. "Are you locked in every day at work? No. You know, there's going to be days where you go in and you just kind of go through, not to say go through the motions, but you go to work and you know it just ain't like a normal day."

He didn't want to come up with reasons why his focus wasn't quite perfect. Maybe it was a bad night of sleep. Maybe he just wasn't feeling right. Didn't matter. Papelbon was forthright in his admission - not an excuse - that he wasn't all there Friday night. That's how one of the top closers in baseball does his part in losing a game his team should have won in the late innings in perhaps its biggest series of the season.

Not that it happens to him often. Maybe once a year. Maybe twice. But there are times, Papelbon said, when the process just isn't the same as when he's locked in, when that staredown at the batter is more than just intimidating - it's deadly.

While he was asked to get six outs instead of the usual three, when Okajima failed to preserve a five-run lead by giving up two solo home runs, walking a batter, and allowing a Johnny Damon double, Papelbon said that wasn't an issue.

"[It] took me a little while there to kind of get my feet underneath me," he said.

Derek Jeter (fisted single), Bobby Abreu (hanging splitter for a double), and Alex Rodriguez (missed location for a line-drive single) all got hits, with Rodriguez's bringing home the sixth run of the inning, the winning run of the game.

"I would just chalk it up to one of them times where you just didn't have your good stuff and you weren't 100 percent focused," Papelbon said. "I realized it after the fact . . . you go back and you kind of look at it. You're like, 'That wasn't me really.' You go back and you look at it, and you're like, 'I could have done better.'

"I've still got to go out there and get outs. I've still got to go out there and stop the bleeding. And, you know, I didn't do that."

And the Red Sox made it five straight losses to New York, the Yankees closing the gap ever so slightly.

Yesterday's win helped calm things down, but earlier Papelbon was asked whether the way the Yankees beat him Friday night was a signal they were getting into the heads of the Sox. Could it have boded ill for the remainder of the season, and possibly the postseason?

"No. No chance," the closer said. "We're way too good, we're way too savvy, and we have too many veterans on this team that won't allow that to happen.

"I mean, it's one game. We've still got almost a whole month left, man.

"This one game ain't going to make or break our season, I can promise you that."

Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com.