DETROIT — There was only one quiet place Thursday evening at Comerica Park — the Yankees clubhouse.
While the Tigers were celebrating on the field, the only sounds a few yards away were the water splashing on the shower tiles and the clunk of bats being loaded into travel bags.
"If I could explain to you what just happened, I would have fixed it," Mark Teixeira said. "We came into this series and the Detroit Tigers kicked our butts for four straight games. That's not like us — we are a better team than we showed in the last four games — but it's the truth."
The Yankees managed only six runs while being swept and scored in just three of the series' 36 innings.
"We beat Baltimore, and we came into this series feeling great, and then this happened," Nick Swisher said. "We never stopped trying, and we never stopped supporting each other, but we also never did our jobs. I don't know how to explain that."
Like Swisher, Curtis Granderson spent parts of the series on the bench, and he was equally perplexed about what had happened to his team's normally potent offense.
"Somehow, we all ran into a slump at the same time," he said. "It's baseball, and you have stretches where you don't get hits, but this was everyone, all at once, at the worst possible time of the year. I don't know how you explain that."
No one, though, was under the spotlight more than Alex Rodriguez, and no one flamed out more spectacularly. He hit .130 in the postseason, was benched twice and only appeared in Game 4 as a late-inning pinch-hitter. Even then, he struggled, flailing helplessly at Drew Smyly's 92-mph fastball in the sixth inning before hitting a weak fly ball to center field, then grounding out weakly against Phil Coke in the ninth.
Things had gotten so bad for Rodriguez at that point that Jim Leyland didn't even bother to send in a right-handed pitcher — Joaquin Benoit and Jose Valverde were both ready — to face him in the ninth. He left it up to Coke, who struggles against right-handed hitting, and it didn't make a difference.
"Obviously, I didn't get the job done during the postseason," Rodriguez said, alone in an interview room away from his other teammates. "That's my fault, but it went across our whole team. In my nine years here, this is a unique situation — I've never been a part of anything here where the whole offense came apart like this. None of us were hitting, so we didn't have a chance."
Rodriguez's future in New York is cloudy, especially if Derek Jeter needs to move to third base as a result of his age and the broken ankle he sustained in Game 1 of the ALCS. A trade would require a team to take on at least some of the $114 million the Yankees owe Rodriguez over the next five seasons, but there have been rumors that the Dodgers or Marlins might be interested.
Rodriguez, though, swears that's not what he wants.
"I have never thought about being with another team," he said. "I want to be here, and I want to help this team win."
The 37-year-old, though, sounded more defiant than conciliatory when he talked about his relationships with manager Joe Girardi.
"I'm not the GM and I'm not the manager, but I know I'm still a very good third baseman," he said. "If I go out there next season and I do my job, I will force Joe to have me out there in the middle of the lineup. I can make everyone's job easy, by just going out there and doing the damage that I know I can still do with the bat.
"I don't plan to stay mediocre."
