REUTERS
Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte looks to his catcher for a sign during Thursday's game against the Red Sox.
Panic may not have reached The Bronx after two losses to the Red Sox to open the season, but it wasn't far away.
"It's a pretty important game for us tonight," manager Joe Girardi said before Thursday night's game. "It's not do-or-die for us, but it is important."
And just like so many times before, the Yankees were able to rely on Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera in a 4-2 win over the Red Sox, avoiding an 0-3 start.
The two 40-plus pitchers didn't just get the Yankees their first win, they helped save a bullpen that had been taxed in the first two games after CC Sabathia and Hiroki Kuroda lasted a combined 6¹/₃ innings.
Pettitte didn't give up a run until the seventh, when Jackie Bradley, Jr.'s double drove in Will Middlebrooks and then David Ross crushed a ball to right-center that Brett Gardner raced down to end the inning.
Rivera, pitching a regular-season game for the first time since tearing the ACL in his right knee shagging fly balls in Kansas City on May 3 last year, gave up a run in the ninth. He still picked up the save, striking out Bradley, Jr. to end it.
The duo made things easy for the patchwork offense — with Robinson Cano hitting second for the first time since 2010 — to score enough to make Pettitte's effort stand up.
Lyle Overbay singled in two runs in the bottom of the second to give the Yankees their first lead of the young season, driving in Eduardo Nunez and Travis Hafner. And Gardner snuck a ball just over the right-field fence to lead off the third to make it 3-0.
Francisco Cervelli, who saved a run by beating Shane Victorino to the plate in the first when Victorino tried to score from second on a wild pitch, added a homer in the seventh to make it 4-1.
The victory came after Girardi, still getting used to life without some of his best offensive players, made a few changes to his lineup.
The struggling Cano, who went 0-for-3, was bumped from third to second in what the manager said was an effort to split up the team's left-handed hitters and not a wake-up call to the offense.
"It's way too early to do that," Girardi said of a shakeup.
Nevertheless, the absence of the injured Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson and Derek Jeter — none of whom are going to be back on the field quickly — already has been felt.
So after using a lineup starting with three straight lefties on Wednesday against Boston right-hander Clay Buchholz, Girardi opted for a slightly more balanced top of the order against another Red Sox righty, Ryan Dempster.
Though the Yankees have overcome slow starts before, there has rarely been as much uncertainty surrounding the team.
"I don't think anyone wants it to go too far no matter who you have in the clubhouse," Girardi said before the game of the sluggish start to the season. "You don't want to get to where you dig yourself a hole."
A throwback performance from Pettitte and Rivera prevented that from happening before the team left for a series in Detroit.
"You look at the guys not in the lineup and look at their ability and numbers and you see what we're up against," Ichiro Suzuki said through a translator prior to the game. "But we all knew that and we have to find ways to score runs. That's what we have to do moving forward, as long as the other guys aren't here."
dan.martin@nypost.com
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