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Another Yankees pitcher struggles with Dodgers

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For the second straight game, a Yankees pitcher struggled through the third and fourth innings of a contest against the Dodgers.
Andy Pettitte gave up three runs in the third inning and allowed left fielder Reed Johnson to score before a solo home run from Ronnie Belliard in the fourth inning Sunday. He followed the example left by A.J. Burnett -- who was pulled from Saturday’s 9-4 loss.

Pettitte worked out of the third-inning jam but allowed Belliard, not typically a power hitter, his second home run of the season in the next inning.

The bigger problem for Pettitte, though, was his fielding. He tried to make two plays in the infield and came away with two errors, one of which was a badly thrown ball to third base that led directly to a Dodgers run.

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At 9-2 with a 2.47 earned-run average and 2,500 innings pitched before Sunday’s game, the veteran has seen better starts.

Pettitte gave up five runs and six hits in five innings.

The struggles of Burnett and Pettitte played a large role in the Dodgers’ dominance of the second and third games of the series before the Yankees put on an unlikely late-inning comeback in the last contest.

Burnett had a three-run cushion in the first inning of the second game, his team up, 3-0, and allowed the game to get away from him.

Pettitte instead dug an early hole, and Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez’s two-run home run was not enough to get him off the hook.

It took late heroics from Chad Huffman and Robinson Cano to finally bring the Yankees back for an 8-6 win in the series’ final game.

-- DeAntae Prince

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