<table> </table> NEW YORK | It could have been worse, actually. The Royals could have found a way to stick Zack Greinke with a loss Saturday afternoon in this blunderthon 3-2 gift to the New York Yankees that required 13 innings.</p><p>It was plenty bad enough, though.</p><p>The Royals wasted a terrific outing by Greinke by conjuring up a toxic mix of wasted opportunities, mental errors and physical mistakes. They also squandered some fine relief work, especially by Robinson Tejeda.</p><p>That the Yankees needed all of it to eke out a one-run victory suggests this really might be the year they miss the playoffs for the first time since 1994.</p><p>&#8220;What can I tell you?&#8221; Royals DH Jos&#233; Guillen said. &#8220;That was the kind of game you haven&#8217;t seen from us in a while. We didn&#8217;t do any of the little things. A lot of wasted opportunities. Both sides, too. They were the same.&#8221;</p><p>No argument there. This was a two-sided eyesore.</p><p>The end came &#8212; after 4 hours, 53 minutes &#8212; when Brett Gardner poked a full-count fastball from Jeff Fulchino through the left side for a game-winning single.</p><p>&#8220;There isn&#8217;t really any pressure on you,&#8221; Gardner insisted. &#8220;If you get a hit, great, everybody loves it. If not, well, we go back out and play defense in the 14th.&#8221;</p><p>Robinson Cano scored from second ahead of the throw from David DeJesus. Cano reached on a one-out single and went to second on Ivan Rodriguez&#8217;s grounder to third.</p><p>&#8220;David didn&#8217;t position himself shallow enough in left field to make a play at home plate,&#8221; manager Trey Hillman said. &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t even close.&#8221;</p><p>DeJesus believed he had a shot at Cano.</p><p>&#8220;The grass just ate the ball up,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It was on the ground the whole way through the infield. I had to keep coming and keep coming. So then I had to rush it.&#8221;</p><p>Fulchino, 0-1, shrugged off Cano&#8217;s single as a bloop and &#8220;one of those things,&#8221; but blamed himself for allowing Gardner to work back to a full count from an 0-2 hole.</p><p>&#8220;That swung that whole at-bat around,&#8221; Fulchino said. &#8220;I put it in the zone, and he put the bat on it.&#8221;</p><p>David Robertson, 3-0, got the victory. He was the sixth reliever used by the Yankees after starter Sidney Ponson allowed two runs in 6 1/3 innings.</p><p>DeJesus&#8217; positioning on the final play is a quibble compared with the Royals&#8217; earlier transgressions. Hillman was biting in his postgame assessment.</p><p>&#8220;Offensively and defensively, we stunk,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We didn&#8217;t do the things offensively, executionwise or approachwise, that we needed to do.</p><p>&#8220;We wasted some great stuff by Zack Greinke. He pitched great, and it shouldn&#8217;t have been 2-0. It should have been a minimum of 4-0 if we were just patient.&#8221;</p><p>This was a teamwide breakdown. Some lowlights from the first five hitters in the lineup:</p><p>&#8226;DeJesus got doubled off second base on a soft liner with the bases loaded in the seventh inning and struck out into another double play in the ninth with Maier running after a leadoff single.</p><p>&#8226;Mike Aviles&#8217; zero-for-six day included a weak grounder to third on a first-pitch swing with runners at second and third with no outs in the seventh.</p><p>&#8226;Mark Teahen was thrown out at third while attempting to advance on a grounder to short in the sixth inning and was slow to field Cano&#8217;s two-out drive in the seventh. A likely double turned into a triple, which produced the tying run on a wild pitch.