Streaking Gardner gets heated after strikeout

Brett Gardner’s hot streak continued with two more hits and a walk, but you’d never have known it from his reaction to a sixth-inning strikeout.

He struck out looking to start the bottom of the sixth and then destroyed a plastic bin in the Yankees dugout with his bat.

“I was just locked in,” Gardner said. “We were down a run and I didn’t like the strike three call. That was it. I got back to the dugout and got into the trash can.”

Joe Girardi ended up getting tossed an inning later after arguing with home-plate umpire Bill Welke as the Yankees were in the midst of having five straight hitters go down looking.

“It started in the sixth inning with Gardner,” Girardi said after his first ejection of the season. “There were four pitches I felt weren’t strikes.”

Perhaps the biggest loss was Gardner’s bat, which broke during his tirade. He’s 9-for-21.

“That bat treated me pretty well the last week,” Gardner said.

Gary Sanchez took another step towards his return to the Yankees, going 1-for-4 in his second rehab game with Triple-A Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday.

After hitting a homer and a double in his first game since suffering a strained right biceps in the first week of the season, Sanchez caught again and is expected to play for SWB for a final time on Thursday as the DH before joining the Yankees in Chicago for their series opener against the Cubs on Friday.

“It’s another big bat that’s gonna help us,” Girardi said. “We just need to get him going.”

The Yankees played well in Sanchez’s absence, largely because of the contributions of Austin Romine, who left Tuesday’s game with cramping in his right groin. Romine was held out of Wednesday’s game and his replacement, Kyle Higashioka, struggled again.

Still in search of his first career hit, Higashioka came up with two outs and the bases loaded in the fifth, but struck out looking. With two more runners on in the seventh, he whiffed looking again.

Jacoby Ellsbury, as expected, missed a second straight game with a bruised nerve in his left elbow suffered while making a catch Monday. And while Girardi said there was some improvement, no decision will be made about his status for the Cubs series until Thursday at the earliest. If the Yankees determine he’s not ready to come back by Friday, he could land on the 10-day disabled list, especially with two series coming up in National League parks — which eliminates the DH option.