Davidoff: Burnett not doing much to gain fans' trust

There's something about A.J.

Something about Mr. Burnett that gets people going, and not in a good way.

When the righthander took his walk of shame from the mound to the dugout last night, having done plenty of damage in what ended as a 6-3 Yankees loss to 47-year-old Jamie Moyer and the Phillies, boy, did the Yankee Stadium crowd let him have it with a fierce shower of boos.

The lack of faith makes sense: When Burnett has a bad day at the office, it can veer toward disastrous. And this awful outing featured the worst possible exit, as Burnett failed to cover first base on Chase Utley's hard grounder to Mark Teixeira, well beyond the bag. His final line: Six runs, six hits and four walks in just 31/3 innings.

Throw in that this marked Burnett's third straight deserved loss in three starts, and people are going to get antsy when they never trusted you much in the first place.

"A lot of times it's a real fine line throwing the ball where you want to in this game," Joe Girardi said after the game. " . . . That seems to be what's been going on in his last couple of starts."

"Everything was up," a soft-spoken Burnett said. "Everything was off."

The Yankees took an immense risk when they signed Burnett to a five-year, $82.5-million contract in December 2008. The acquisition arguably featured less logic than the pricier commitments to CC Sabathia (seven years, $161 million) and Mark Teixeira (eight years, $180 million).

The move presented peril in two distinct arenas: 1) Statistical, as the projections for Burnett didn't encourage, and 2) Personality-wise, as Burnett had a reputation for being excitable and injury prone.

So far, though, Burnett has proved a decent investment. Even after this game, he has a 4.13 ERA in 2941/3 regular-season innings as a Yankee, striking out 258 and walking 130. Personality-wise, he has fit in well, with the notable exception of his problems clicking with Jorge Posada - to whom he pitched to for the first time since April 23.

And yet, every time he has one of these dreadful starts - call it A.J. Being A.J., or Bad A.J. - he sets off the alarms.

In four of his 47 regular-season starts as a Yankee, Burnett has lasted fewer than five innings. That's not an outrageous percentage. Throw in his brutal showing in Game 5 of last year's World Series, however, and . . . to quote Jonah Hill from "Superbad," "People don't forget."

When you look at the peripheral numbers, there doesn't appear great reason to worry about Burnett. On the website Fangraphs.com, you can see that entering this game, Burnett's line-drive percentage and fly-ball percentage had actually dropped from 2009, with his ground-ball percentage increasing - resulting in both fewer strikeouts and fewer walks.

And still . . . those boos spoke to more than just frustration that he didn't cover first base, in my opinion. They reflected Burnett's trust deficit with the Yankees' fan base. Fans get aggravated by guys whom they feel aren't giving their all, and who experience streakiness as Burnett tends to do. Last year, remember he had a stretch of four bad starts out of eight in August and September, and it caused much consternation in the yakosphere.

Unfair? I think so. Here in the Bronx, though, you make top dollar knowing that the bar is set high.

When you put in a performance like this one, you pay the price.