Andy Pettitte delivered a quality start for the Yankees on Monday night, but they lost and the veteran lamented a mistake thrown to Baltimore's Chris Davis.

Pettitte, 40, was given an early 1-0 lead, then retired the first eight batters he faced. But, almost at the flick of a switch, things went sour as he surrendered a pair of singles and walked J.J. Hardy to load the bases with two outs in the third.

That's when Pettitte made his biggest mistake of the game, hanging a 1-0 slider to Chris Davis. Pettitte wanted the ball down and away, but instead left it dead center and Davis took advantage by lining a shot into right field for a pair of RBIs.

"He's a good pitcher, he knows how to pitch and he knows how to use your weaknesses against you," Davis said of Pettitte. "I just went out there and didn't try to do too much, looked for a pitch out over the plate and tried to stay up the middle."

The loss hangs more on the offense, which went 2-for-8 with runners in scoring position while stranding 10 base runners, but that did little to ease Pettitte's frustration.

"No, because I didn't," Pettitte said when asked if he pitched well enough to win. "It was a tough game. Obviously the game came down, made the mistake to Davis that scored the two runs. I just left him a ball right in the middle of the zone to hit and that was a serious mistake by me in that situation.

"That pretty much cost us the game. Mark did a good job later in the game when they had a runner on second, inside-outing the ball trying to get the guy to third base ... Just a really good piece of hitting."