NEW YORK - Yankees pitcher Bryan Mitchell was usually an outfielder when he wasn't pitching growing up, and he estimated that the last time he played first base was sometime during his senior year at Rockingham County (NC) High School, which would've been the spring of 2009.

He knows the answer now, though: April 30, 2017, when he ended up playing that position for one inning in the Yankees' 7-4 loss to Baltimore - manning it in between two innings on the mound, no less.

"I definitely wasn't expecting that," Mitchell smiled after the game. "But Larry (Rothschild) came up and asked me if I've ever played first; it's been a while, but I said I was capable, and that was pretty much it. They told me to get a glove, and if that situation arose, that's what they were going to do."

The situation that did arise, in the tenth, saw the Yankees headed to extra innings after Mitchell pitched the ninth and they rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the frame. Mitchell was the fourth reliever of the day and manager Joe Girardi wanted to use Aroldis Chapman in the tenth, but with Adam Warren unavailable, burning both Mitchell and Chapman and not winning the game in the bottom of the tenth would have left only nominal lefty specialist Tommy Layne remaining in the bullpen.

So, after Chris Carter struck out to end the ninth, Chapman took the field…and so did Mitchell, armed with Greg Bird's first baseman's mitt to replace Carter at first and keep himself available to pitch the 11th inning and beyond if it came to that.

"I felt it was the only way to use Chappy in the tenth, give us a chance to win the game in the bottom of the inning, and then go back to Mitchell," Girardi said. "But I started thinking about it as soon as I used Dellin (Betances, who pitched the eighth with the Yankees down 4-2); once he came in, my thought process started about what I would possibly do. I was short on pitchers, so I knew I had to maybe do something unorthodox."

Of course, the ball found Mitchell right away, as he got a foul pop that a combination of wind and inexperience led him to miss. That batter, catcher Welington Castillo, ended up reaching base, but Mitchell not only held him on with aplomb, he also made the most of his second pop-up chance later in the inning and the Yankees escaped unscathed.

"I should've expected the first one to find me," Mitchell smiled. "I guess I just went back too far and the ball had a lot of spin, so I never got there; I thought I was going to get there, but I just couldn't. Got the second, though; I know how to catch a fly ball, but it was abnormal, so it was pretty intense."

Mitchell's teammates were all smiles when he returned to the dugout, but when asked out of the moment after the game, a couple admitted it wasn't that way the whole time.

"I was thinking don't hit it to him!" Brett Gardner smiled. "Obviously they did, but he made the one play and everything worked out fine. It was a little different, but we knew what Joe was doing and why."

"I was just praying for him, to be honest," Betances added. "If that was me, I'd be nervous as hell!"

One teammate who overheard the conversation prior to the move did support him, though.

"I heard them talking, and I told him when he went to go get a glove that he just has to play the game, that's all," Didi Gregorius said. "Everybody's going to talk about the one that he dropped, but it's too bad nobody's going to talk about the one he caught."

Of course, as unorthodox as it was, Girardi had no qualms about doing what he had to do.

"You worry about if they can handle the job, but the thought process is I have a strikeout pitcher on the mound, and you don't think there's going to be too many ground balls over there," Girardi said. "If it was a ground ball pitcher and a lineup with a lot of lefties, that may be a different story, but this was a unique situation, and I thought the chances of him having to handle a ball weren't too big."

Mitchell went back to the mound for the 11th, with Bird taking over at first, but all unfortunately didn't end well; the righty had gone about an hour between pitches, and he ended up allowing three runs in that final frame. Mitchell had thrown some while the Yankees were batting, so he didn't think the layoff affected him, and neither did Girardi - nor did the skipper second-guess the situation.

"He got two outs and had a runner on, so he saw three hitters before he gave up the go-ahead single, which was a ground ball," Girardi said. "It was unorthodox, but sometimes when you sit through a long inning you'll go down and throw like he did today. It's tough, but you know, just trying to win the game."