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Yankees-Dodgers Preview

Jun 26, 2010 - 6:46 AM By MATT BECKER STATS Senior Writer

New York (45-27) at Los Angeles (39-33), 7:10 p.m. EDT

A.J. Burnett has come a long way from where he started the season, but that's not a good thing.

Coming off his latest in a string of terrible outings, Burnett looks to avoid losing five straight starts for the first time in five years when he takes the ball for the visiting New York Yankees on Saturday against the struggling Los Angeles Dodgers.

Burnett (6-6, 4.83 ERA) displayed All-Star form the first month of the season, posting a 1.99 ERA through his first six starts while opening a career-best 4-0. He began to slip a bit over the following four weeks, going 2-2 with a 4.99 ERA, before completely derailing this month.

The right-hander has posted a 10.35 ERA while losing his four June starts. Against Arizona on Monday, Burnett was knocked around for seven runs and nine hits in four innings of a 10-4 loss. Most of the damage came in the first inning, when he was tagged for five runs - all scoring on three homers.

"I don't feel like myself," Burnett said. "I'm not having fun right now. Who would in a stretch like this? But the game is supposed to be fun. When you come out and take the air out of your team right away for a handful of starts it gets quite frustrating. I'm going to keep plugging away. It's just a matter of getting on a good roll."

This probably won't happen if he can't keep the ball in the park.

After giving up four homers in his first 11 outings, Burnett has surrendered nine in 20 innings during his skid. It's the most homers he's allowed in a four-start span in his 12-year career.

"He's just not making his pitches is the bottom line," New York manager Joe Girardi said. "We'll get this corrected. We will, but right now he's just not making pitches."

Burnett hasn't lost five straight starts since Aug. 24-Sept. 14, 2005, the worst stretch of his career. Immediately before the start of that losing skid, Burnett held Los Angeles to six hits in eight innings of a 3-0 win for Florida on Aug. 19, 2005 - still his last outing against the Dodgers.

He is 3-2 with a 2.45 ERA in seven career starts versus Los Angeles.

The AL East-leading Yankees (46-27) won Friday's series opener 2-1, as Alex Rodriguez homered in the sixth inning to snap a 1-all tie in manager Joe Torre's first game against New York since leaving as manager following the 2007 season.

Rodriguez, who is batting .410 with four home runs and 16 RBIs in his last 12 games in NL parks, was portrayed unfavorably in Torre's book "The Yankee Years."

New York won its third in a row while sending the Dodgers (39-34) to their 10th loss in 13 games, a slide that has dropped them from first to third in the NL West.

Los Angeles, which managed four hits Friday, has scored one run or none three times in its last five contests.

The slumping offense has made things tough for Hiroki Kuroda (6-5, 3.06), Saturday's probable Dodgers starter.

Kuroda has yielded two runs while striking out 23 over 19 innings in his last three starts, but has only one win to show for it because the offense has failed to score for him in two of those outings. The right-hander gave up two runs while striking out nine in seven innings at Boston on Sunday, but got charged with a 2-0 loss.

Kuroda is 1-6 with a 4.53 ERA in seven career interleague starts. He has never faced the Yankees.