After taking three straight games over the weekend against Justin Verlander’s former team, the Yankees destroyed Verlander his current team on Tuesday, winning 10-3. The Yankees are now 5-0 against the Astros on the season
After taking three straight games over the weekend against Justin Verlander’s former team, the Yankees destroyed Verlander his current team on Tuesday, winning 10-3. The Yankees are now 5-0 against the Astros on the season with two games remaining between the two.
1. When the 2009 Yankees pounded Pedro Martinez for seven runs in 10 innings in Games 2 and 6 of the World Series, it didn’t feel right. Yes, standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium twice in the series and taking two of the Phillies’ four losses in the six games was technically Martinez, but it wasn’t the Martinez I had grown accustomed to watching pitch against the Yankees as a Red Sox starting in 1998 and then as a Met seven years later. Martinez was there in name only.
That was the feeling I had on Tuesday night watching the Yankees beat up Justin Verlander at Yankee Stadium. Verlander has been a rival since 2006 and has nearly always pitched well against the Yankees, including being on the winning side of six postseason series against them (2006, 2011, 2012, 2017, 2019, 2022) and never once on the losing side of a postseason against them. But the pitcher standing on the Stadium mound on Tuesday may have been Verlander, but only in name.
2. “They had a good approach and I wasn’t very good,” Verlander said. “If I’m being really honest with myself, the last couple of games, particularly the walks, showed me I was a little off.”
The first walk off Verlander came from Aaron Judge in the bottom of the first. After Anthony Volpe lined out on the first pitch Verlander threw, Juan Soto followed with single and Judge drew a five-pitch walk. Then Alex Verdugo put together a seven-pitch at-bat, and on that seventh pitch, he hit a three-run home run to right field. Just like that, the Yankees had a 3-1 lead.
3. “I think these guys told me today that I got some work to do,” Verlander said. “I’ve got to be more deceptive.
Verlander threw 97 pitches and recorded just 15 outs, allowing 11 baserunners. Of his 97 pitches, the Yankees only swung and missed at five of them. Last season, Verlander faced the Yankees twice as a Met and twice as an Astro. In those four starts, the Yankees swung and missed an average of 10 times per game. When Verlander struck out 11 Yankees in Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS, he got 17 swinging strikes.
4. On Tuesday, Verlander had a hard time fooling anyone. The Yankees were taking his breaking pitches off the plate and he couldn’t blow his patented high fastball by anyone, as it was either put in play or fouled back, even at 96 mph. David Cone remarked on YES that Verlander “didn’t know where to go” to get strikes and outs.
“I would like to have a tick or two more veto on my fastball,” Verlander said, “which is something I’ve been expecting because I wasn’t able to long toss really at all.”
5. The Yankees’ early 3-1 lead was a lead they wouldn’t relinquish and a lead that was never in jeopardy, thanks to the offense’s ability to tack on a run in the third, two runs in the fourth, a run in the fifth and sixth and two more in the seventh. The Yankees put 20 baserunners on in the game and scored half of them, including three home runs off Verlander (Verdugo, Volpe and Giancarlo Stanton). The lead was also never in jeopardy because of Luis Gil’s dominant performance.
6. After retiring Jose Altuve to begin the game, Gil allowed a long home run to Kyle Tucker. In the moment, I figured Gil would be wild, give up some long balls, the offense would be stifled by Verlander and the Yankees would help wake up the Astros and save their season. The Tucker home run ended up not only being the only run that Gil allowed, but the only hit he allowed.
7. It was the second straight start Gil gave the Yankees at least six innings after pitching 6 1/3 shutout innings against the Orioles last Wednesday. In just one of seven starts this season has he allowed more than three earned runs, now boasting a 2.92 ERA and 1.135 WHIP.
“He’s just got a lot of weapons, he’s hard to hit,” Aaron Boone said. “It wasn’t perfect by any means for him tonight.”
Gil did add his league-leading walk total with four, and against a better team that’s a recipe for disaster, but against the last-place Astros, it wasn’t.
8. It feels weird to talk about the Astros in such a degrading manner. After seven straight ALCS appearances and four World Series appearances over that time with two championships, at some point the clock would strike midnight on their dominance, but I didn’t see it coming this season. It was the Yankees who put them in an 0-4 record hole to begin the season and it’s the Yankees who are now 5-0 against them on the year with still two games to go. The Yankees 5-0 against the Astros? It’s a record that seems impossible, and yet it’s fact.
9. I’m not ready to pronounce the Astros’ season over, not even with their 12-23 record and negative-27 run differential. Despite their horrific position, they are still only seven games back in the loss column in a weak AL West and still hold an astounding 35.1 percent chance of making the playoffs. They have the same amount of losses as the Angels, three more losses than the A’s and the only team with a worse winning percentage than them in the AL is the White Sox. Despite all of that, I’m still not ready to call their season over. Their last seven seasons, especially 2017, 2019 and 2022 have scarred me.
10. Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and the offense could help push the 2024 Astros closer to the brink and to the point of no return on Wednesday and Thursday. Taking five in a row against the Astros and five of seven in the season series is already more than enough, but taking another or both over the next two days would go a long way to ruining the rest of the Astros’ season. With two games left in this series and two games left against the Astros for the season, the Yankees can continue to do their part in ending a dynastic Astros run they helped start.
After shutting out the Orioles 2-0 on Wednesday, they dropped the series finale 7-2 on Thursday and lost an important series in Baltimore. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. In the biggest series
After shutting out the Orioles 2-0 on Wednesday, they dropped the series finale 7-2 on Thursday and lost an important series in Baltimore.
1. In the biggest series of the season to date the Yankees came up small, losing three of four to the Orioles.
“A really good team, obviously,” Aaron Boone said of the Orioles. “They can pitch, they’re athletic, they got thump. They’re a complete team that you gotta play well.”
And his team didn’t play well against them.
2. A four-game series against the Orioles is about as close to a postseason series as you can have in the regular season and these Yankees played exactly like they always do in the postseason.
In four games and 36 innings at Oriole Park, the Yankees scored six runs. They were shut out on Monday, hit a pair of solo home runs on Tuesday, hit a two-run home run on Wednesday, and on Thursday, they scored on the worst throw home you’ll ever see and a solo home run. An average of one-and-a-half runs per game over four games against their direct competition for the AL East.
3. And because it was as close to a postseason series as you get in the regular season, Aaron Judge played as close to the way he does in the postseason as possible.
Judge went 1-for-13 with two walks and four strikeouts in the series. A measly single in four games. A measly single in four games is all he provided in the 2022 ALCS as well (1-for-16), the last time these Yankees were in the playoffs.
“Somebody’s going to pay, big time,” Boone said of when Judge gets going. “He’ll get it going, and look out when he does.”
If healthy, it’s impossible to believe Judge won’t “get it going.” But knowing the Yankees’ now six-year track record of misdiagnosing and improperly handling injuries, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Judge isn’t healthy. Also, Boone is the last person in the world who should be trying to sell people on his players “getting it going” after his failed attempts at this in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
4. Judge was the worst hitter on the team in the biggest series of the season to date, but he wasn’t alone.
Giancarlo Stanton went 1-for-10 with two walks and three strikeouts and Anthony Rizzo went 1-for-13 with four strikeouts. The Yankees’ 3-4-5 hitters went a combined 3-for-36 with four walks and 11 strikeouts as the heart of the order needs a triple bypass.
5. If you’re thinking, “Well, Alex Verdugo is really the cleanup hitter now,” you’re right, but Verdugo was on paternity leave for the first three games of the series, and for the fourth he batted sixth? Why? Here’s what Boone had to say:
“Verdugo will be back in the cleanup spot tomorrow,” Boone said. “With the long travel, I just want to get him settled and ease him in.”
So he’s “eased in” enough to start and play, but not bat cleanup, and instead bat behind Gleyber Torres. I don’t care if he lost his eye sight on the flight to Baltimore or a limb, he should never bat behind Torres again.
6. Before Verdugo’s return flight to the East Coast, the Yankees shut out the Orioles 2-0 on Wednesday. A two-run home run from Oswaldo Cabrera was all the offense in the game behind Luis Gil’s best start in the majors: 6.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K. When Gil is throwing strikes, he can dominate, and the only start in which he didn’t really throw strikes was the seven-walk performance in Toronto after the Yankees inexplicably gave him extra rest.
Clay Holmes was asked to get the final five outs of the game and it only made the loss in Milwaukee on Friday that much more comical when Boone wouldn’t use him for six outs and the Yankees lost. Holmes wasn’t needed on Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday (he did get one unnecessary appearance on Monday from Boone just to get some work in a close game the Yankees were losing), just as I predicted.
7. On Thursday, Carlos Rodon was putrid, reverting back to his 2023 self: 4 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 3 HR. For as bad as Rodon was, Boone thought there was some good.
“A few mistakes around some good,” Boone said of Rodon.
That quote would make you believe there was more good than mistakes. “Some” is more than a “few.”
Rodon had a 1-2-3 first inning then loaded the bases with no outs in the second and was fortunate to get out of it when Ryan McKenna’s line drive was hit right at Verdugo in left.
In the third, immediately after the Yankees took a one-run lead, he gave the run back on a solo home run to Ryan Mountcastle.
In the fourth, he gave up a pair of solo home runs to Jorge Mateo Ryan McKenna. Yes, the 29-year-old Jorge Mateo who has 24 home runs and a .637 OPS in his career. And yes, the 27-year-old Ryan McKenna with six home runs and a .620 OPS in his career.
During the fifth inning, Michael Kay mentioned how Rodon had “great stuff” in the game, despite the Yankees losing 4-1. After Kay said that, the Orioles scored three more runs and Rodon never recorded an out in the inning.
I’m not sure how anyone could have “great stuff” and allow three home runs (including to JORGE MATEO and RYAN MCKENNA) and six earned runs in four-plus innings. Delusional.
8. Boone would rather tell you it’s snowing outside on a 99-degree day in July than not defend one of his players when he sucks and did so again by trying to sugarcoat Rodon’s awful day. However, when it came to Torres’ error, Boone didn’t stand by his second baseman.
“You gotta secure the ball,” Boone said. “This is the big leagues. You gotta make the play, and he didn’t make the play.”
Of course Torres hit his first home run of the season (in the 33rd game of the season) the following inning with the Yankees losing by six. In terms of meaningless home runs it was high on the list.
“We got punched in the face,” Torres said. “We have to figure out a way to beat them.”
One day closer to Torres no longer a Yankee. One day closer.
9. With the game out of reach, Boone gave the ball to Michael Tonkin for mop-up duty in the seventh and eighth innings. It was Tonkin’s third appearance as a Yankee. In his second appearance he also was asked to eat meaningless innings. In his first, well, he was asked to close out a one-run game with the automatic runner on. Isn’t Boone the best?
10. The Yankees now trail the Orioles by two games in the loss column and return home for a three-game series against the much-improved Tigers. The Tigers lost 84 games last year, but are five games above .500 this season and have a really good rotation and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Then again, after the Yankees struggled to put away the Rays and split a series with the A’s at home, they should know better than to take any team lightly, even at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees’ offense mostly no-showed for a second straight game in Baltimore, and the Yankees lost to the Orioles again. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. The Yankees couldn’t hit for a second
The Yankees’ offense mostly no-showed for a second straight game in Baltimore, and the Yankees lost to the Orioles again.
1. The Yankees couldn’t hit for a second straight night, and for a second straight night they lost to the Orioles. The 4-2 loss on Tuesday coupled with the 2-0 loss on Monday gives the Yankees two runs in 18 innings in what is the most important series of the season to date.
Dean Kremer entered the game with a 4.61 ERA, but had no problem keeping the Yankees’ offense quiet: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 2 HR. The Yankees had five hits in the game and Juan Soto (2) and Austin Wells (2) had all but one of them. Anthony Volpe had the other.
2. Soto stared down Kremer after his home run, and when asked about it after the game, he said, “We were going back and forth. He didn’t like the shuffle. I bet he didn’t like the homer, too.”
Typically, it would bother me for a Yankee to be trash talking an opponent after a loss, but Soto can do whatever he wants since he represents the entirety of the offense for the season. This is his team and if he wants to chirp Kremer after blasting a 447-foot home run onto Eutaw Street, so be it. He’s the only one contributing offensively with any consistency.
3. With the loss, the Yankees fell to 0-9 when they score two runs or fewer this season, which is the worst winning percentage in the majors.
As I wrote yesterday, the Yankees are 19-3 when they score at least three runs, and yet they couldn’t do that for two straight days against the Orioles. They have the best winning percentage in the majors when they score three runs and it feels impossible for them to do so at times.
4. The biggest reason it feels impossible at times is because of their knack for destroying innings with double plays. The Yankees hit into three double plays in the game: Aaron Judge hit an inning-ending one in the first, Anthony Rizzo erased a leadoff walk in the second and Giancarlo Stanton ended the Yankees’ rally in the sixth. The Yankees have hit into 36 double plays, which leads the majors.
5, Nearly three years ago in June 2021, after a loss to the Red Sox, Boone said, “Typically, the better teams are going to hit into double plays.” Three years later, I’m still laughing at that quote. Here is the double play leaderboard this season following the Yankees’ 36.
Not exactly the kind of company you want to be keeping.
6. The Yankees’ double play problem is led by Judge, who has hit into 10, tops in the majors. His previous high in a season is 16 (2021), which he could break by mid-May at this rate. Judge is 1-for-7 with a walk and two strikeouts in the series.
7. “I think they’ve had a lot of good bounces go their way,” Wells said of the Orioles after the game.
That’s not how I view it. I view a young, athletic, fast team that puts the ball in play and is able to put pressure on the defense, even beating out balls that might otherwise not be hits. The Yankees, on the other hand, have players like Rizzo and Stanton going station and station (and at times not even doing that like Stanton on Monday) and I’m not sure either would beat Jorge Posada in a race during his playing days.
The Orioles may have soft contacted their way to a three-run lead against Nestor Cortes (6 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K), but Joe Girardi explained it best on the broadcast, saying, “They beat two balls out for infield hits where a lot of teams don’t get those hits and it changes the complexion of the inning. Very athletic and young, fast team. It doesn’t always have to be stolen bases and first to home. Sometimes it’s infield singles.”
8. This is Anthony Volpe’s batting line from the first four games of the season: .571/.667/1.000.
This is Volpe’s line from the next 26 games: .231/.310/.317.
Volpe has stolen one base on one attempt in the last 14 games. He has been on first base 14 times in that span and has run once.
It’s clear the Yankees don’t want Volpe to run in front of Soto or Judge for fear of taking a run off the board if either of them goes deep, but Volpe needs to run. It’s the one thing offensively he’s good at. Considering he is rarely getting on base (.246 on-base percentage in the last two weeks), it would be nice if he could put some pressure on the defense and make something happen on the bases.
9. Gleyber Torres made his losing play of the day when on a ground ball instead of taking an easy out at first tried to throw out the runner moving to third and hit the runner with the ball, allowing the runner to then score. Even on days when Torres pitches in offensively (which is rare), he’s usually negates it with a defensive or baserunning mistakes. On Tuesday, he made the defensive mistake and did nothing at the plate, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. His OPS is .549.
10. “Overall, I think it was a pretty good month for us,” Cortes said. “We could have probably won four of those 12 games that we lost.”
It was a good month (plus four days), and Cortes is right, the Yankees could have won more games than they did, much more than four.
The only true loss was 7-0 to Arizona on April 2. Other than that, the Yankees were in every loss. They lost by one run three times, lost by two runs six times and lost by three runs two times.
If they continue to play the way they played for four days in March and all of April, they will be just fine. It would be nice though if they could win the next two days in Baltimore.
The Yankees lost to the Orioles 2-0 on Monday. It was the fifth time the Yankees were shut out in 30 games this season. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. The Yankees began
The Yankees lost to the Orioles 2-0 on Monday. It was the fifth time the Yankees were shut out in 30 games this season.
1. The Yankees began the most important series of the season to date — a four-game series against the Orioles — with a 2-0 loss.
“They’re legit,” Clarke Schmidt of the Orioles said after the game.
Yeah, no shit. They only won 101 games last year, finishing 19 games ahead of the Yankees, have the best offense in the AL this year and now have a one-game lead in the AL East.
2. “When you face them and then you face other teams, you really kind of feel it,” Schmidt said. “They really hit mistakes.”
Schmidt made his only mistake of the game to the first batter he faced. With a 2-2 count against Gunnar Henderson, Schmidt was unable to put the lefty away as Henderson fouled off two two-strike pitches and then hammered a long home run to right field. Schmidt’s career issue of being unable to put away lefties found its way into the first batter of the game and it seemed like an ominous sign.
3. But it wasn’t. The Yankees lost the game, but it wasn’t because of Schmidt. He ended up going 5 2/3 innings while allowing just the one run from the Henderson home run. To me, it was the best start of Schmidt’s career, considering the lineup and the ballpark.
The Yankees’ offense is what lost them the game, which has been the case in all but two of their losses this season (April 14 at Cleveland and April 26 at Milwaukee). The offense was shut out for a fifth time in 30 games.
4. “I haven’t really thought much of it,” Aaron Judge said of the shutouts. “Things like that happen.”
Things like that do happen, but for these Yankees, they happen way more than they should. To put into perspective how truly awful it is to be shut out five times in 30 games, here is the game number when the fifth shutout of the season happened for the Yankees in the other five full seasons in the Aaron Boone era.
2023: 103 2022: 72 2021: 90 2019: Only two shutouts 2018: Only three shutouts
The 2023 offense was as bad as it gets in terms of Yankees’ offenses and that team didn’t get shut out for a fifth time for another 73 games. The 2018 and 2019 offenses were so good they were only shut out three and two times respectively. (It’s hard not to think the Yankees’ best chance at winning it all with this group, or what’s left of this group, was 2017-19.)
“We’ve had some of those nights where we’ve gotten shut out when we’ve had a lot of traffic,” Boone said. “We didn’t come up with a big hit, and they kept us in the ballpark.”
It’s really not surprising when the Yankees get shut out because the 2023 Yankees Plus Juan Soto don’t score and don’t win when Soto doesn’t hit. These Yankees go as Soto goes, and Soto only went 1-for-4 with a single on Monday. Now that single unfortunately went off the high right-field wall at Camden Yards, but that’s baseball, right?
5. After Schmidt, Dennis Santana threw 1 1/3 perfect innings, Caleb Ferguson got two outs and Clay Holmes got an out.
The best part is Holmes probably won’t be needed for a few days. He may not be needed for a week. If Boone wants to play the what-if game, let’s play it. He thinks he made need Holmes for an inning on Saturday, so he wasn’t going to push him for a second inning on Friday. Well, what if Holmes isn’t need on Saturday, or Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday? Then he’ll be used in a game on Wednesday no matter what the score is to get him work.
Holmes wasn’t needed again on Monday, but Boone went to him. Apparently, having Holmes get an out in the eighth inning of a game the Yankees are trailing is more important than Holmes closing out a game the Yankees are winning.
If the Yankees had tied the game in the ninth, Holmes was going to pitch the ninth and be used for four outs. Which means, Boone is OK with Holmes pitching in multiple innings in a game the Yankees are losing and then tied in rather than pitching multiple innings in a game the Yankees are tied and then winning.
6. Anthony Volpe had another poor night at the plate (0-for-4 with a walk) and made an extremely costly error in the field, booting an inning-ending ground ball in the eighth that increased the Orioles’ lead from 1-0 to 2-0. Once the deficit went from one run to two runs with the bottom of the order due up (Gleyber Torres, Oswaldo Cabrera and Trent Grisham) it was hard to envision the Yankees coming back. And they didn’t.
7. Grayson Rodriguez got lit up in his previous start by the lowly Angels (4.1, 11 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 1 HR), so of course he was awesome against the Yankees (5.2 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 3 K). The Yankees had some bad luck on their side in the game with booted balls by the Orioles going right to other fielders, rockets hit right at fielders, the called third strike on Anthony Rizzo, the Soto “single” and the play where Giancarlo Stanton had to hold up on a base hit to the outfield before getting thrown out at second.
8. Michael Kay is always quick to defend Stanton and his speed on the bases saying he’s not “loafing” and that that’s how fast he can go. That’s not as fast as Stanton can run. That’s as fast as Stanton can run without getting injured. It’s not running. It’s jogging. It may not even be jogging. It’s the type of speed a valet attendant uses to go get your car. Unfortunately, Stanton isn’t going to get faster, only slower, which is hard to believe.
9. It’s hard to believe the Yankees only struck out three times in the game and not only lost, but were shut out, stranding all 10 baserunners they had. It’s hard to believe this offense scored 15 runs in back-to-back games over the weekend (even if some of those runs came against position players pitching). It’s even harder to believe how much the offense missed Alex Verdugo’s bat in the lineup.
Verdugo has become the team’s second-best hitter through the first month of the season, behind Soto. Is anyone surprised the two best hitters on the team through the first month are two players the Yankees didn’t draft or develop and have had the least to do with the major-league success?
10. “Guys were taking good swings all night,” Judge said. “We just couldn’t get them to fall.”
The Yankees will need them to start falling over the next three days. The Yankees are 19-3 when they score three runs in a game. That’s all that’s needed: three runs! At worst, the Yankees need to split this series with the Orioles, and to do that, they will now need to win two of the next three. They will need to more offensively than they did on Monday, which was nothing … again.
The Yankees lost a winnable game to the Brewers on Friday, falling 7-6 in 11 innings thanks to their own manager. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees. 1. On Monday, I wrote the following:
The Yankees lost a winnable game to the Brewers on Friday, falling 7-6 in 11 innings thanks to their own manager.
Boone has had a mostly error-free three-plus weeks to begin the season. Wait until that changes. The Yankees are 7-2 in one-run games. Of their 23 games, 39 percent have been decided by one run. The more one-run games they play in, the more Boone’s in-game decisions become vitally important. If there’s any part of the Yankees standing on the tracks waiting to be destroyed by the regression train it’s their play in one-run games when managed by Boone.
The train is here.
On Friday night in Milwaukee, Yankees fans were treated to the version of Aaron Boone they have watched for six-plus seasons. The version of Aaron Boone that plays for tomorrow when there’s a winnable game at hand. The real Aaron Boone.
2. It all started in the bottom of the sixth inning with the Yankees leading 5-4.
Luis Gil had given the Yankees five mediocre innings, allowing four earned runs on five hits and two walks and getting burned by a pair of two-run home runs. He had thrown 95 pitches and considering the Yankees haven’t let him reach 100 pitches this season and have already given him extra rest once (which led to a seven-walk performance), he wasn’t going to be able to finish a sixth inning of work unless he got three groundouts in four pitches (something he’s incapable of doing). But Boone sent him back out for the sixth anyway.
Two pitches later, the Brewers had a leadoff double with the tying run on second and no one out. That double came off the bat of Gary Sanchez, who undoubtedly wants to give it to the Yankees more than you want anything in your life. Knowing how the law of ex-Yankees works in that every ex-Yankee comes back to haunt their old team, an extra-base hit was inevitable in that situation.
3. Boone used Gil in hopes of stealing one or two outs in the sixth, figuring it would be one or two less outs his bullpen would need to get. It’s a strategy employed by Boone frequently and one that backfires nearly every time, just like the contact play the Yankees put in motion with a runner on third and less than two outs on a ball hit in the infield with the infield in. You know, the play they miserably failed to convert in the 11th inning.
Stealing outs is a dangerous game, but Boone doesn’t care. He doesn’t care who the pitcher is he’s sending back out, what the score is, what the situation is, what the standings say, nothing. He’s going to do it no matter what and on Friday he sent back out a clearly fatigued Gil, who didn’t have his best stuff all night and who battled and grinded to get through five innings.
Because teams other than the Yankees have no problem scoring a runner from second with no outs without getting a base hit, the Brewers did it with ease: ground ball to second followed by a sacrifice fly. 5-5. Tie game.
4. The Yankees failed to score in the seventh inning because Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo, the only hitters on the team capable of getting on base consistently didn’t bat in the seventh. In the eighth, Soto led off the inning with a single, but was quickly erased when Aaron Judge hit into a double play, which is all he seems to do. Well, that and strike out. In the ninth, Verdugo did walk with one out, but was thrown out trying to steal second.
5. With the game tied going to the bottom of the ninth, Boone called on Clay Holmes. Ron Marinaccio (1 1/3 innings), Dennis Santana (2/3 innings) and Caleb Ferguson (1 inning) had done their jobs keeping the Brewers off the board for the sixth, seventh and eighth innings. Holmes is the team’s best reliever, and despite it not being a save situation he entered the game. (It’s absolutely insane to manage your bullpen based on a stat, and yet, the Yankees still do so.)
Here was Holmes’ recent workload before Friday:
Sunday, April 21: Didn’t pitch Monday, April 22: Didn’t pitch Tuesday, April 23: Nine pitches Thursday, April 24: Didn’t pitch
Over the previous four days, Holmes had made one appearance throwing nine pitches. When he entered the game on Friday against the Brewers, I figured because of his recent light workload, he was going to pitch the ninth, and if the game reached the 10th inning and the Yankees scored in the top of the 10th, he would close out the game in the bottom of the 10th inning. Sound logic. Unfortunately, the manager of the Yankees doesn’t operate or base decisions on sound logic.
Holmes went out and had arguably his best outing of the season. He retired the side on 10 pitches, striking out Oliver Dunn and William Contreras in the process. To the 10th inning the game went.
Giancarlo Stanton pinch hit for Trent Grisham and immediately crushed a double to the left-center gap scoring the automatic runner on second. The Yankees had a 6-5 lead and the idea of Holmes having a chance to close out the game in the bottom half of the inning was coming to fruition.
6. After the top of the Yankees’ lineup stranded Stanton on second with no outs (because why wouldn’t they?), Holmes didn’t walk to the mound from the dugout. Instead, out of the bullpen came newest Yankee Michael Tonkin.
If you were unfamiliar with Tonkin prior to seeing him jog to the mound to close out Friday’s game and were thinking “Who the fuck is this guy?” when an unknown Number 50 uniform began throwing warm-up pitches to Jose Trevino, it’s understandable. I wasn’t thinking “Who the fuck is this guy?” I was thinking “Why is this fucking guy in the game?”
Tonkin had become a Yankee just the day before. He had signed with the Mets in the winter, got designated for assignment by the Mets and purchased by the Twins on April 9, got designated for assignment again and selected off waivers by the Mets on April 17 and then got designated for assignment again and selected off waivers by the Yankees on Thursday. Why has Tonkin been designated for assignment three times in less than three weeks? Surely, it must be because he’s awesome and capable of closing out the first-place Brewers in extra innings with the automatic runner on second and no outs.
Tonklin immediately gave up the lead, allowing a game-tying single to Willy Adams, but did manage to get out of the 10th inning without losing the game. Unfortunately, he would save that for the 11th inning.
In the 11th inning, the Yankees failed to score the automatic runner from second, largely because the team’s offense sucks, but also because their trusty manager had the aforementioned contact play on with a runner on third and one out in the inning. That runner was Jahmai Jones and he was thrown out by at least 10 feet on the idiotic play, running home on contact on a ball hit right back to the pitcher. In the bottom of the 11th, Tonkin allowed a walk-off single to Joey Ortiz, as the Brewers’ 8-hitter capped off a nice four-RBI day.
“It’s definitely a tough spot to go in,” Boone said of Tonkin entering an extra-innings save situation for his first appearance in his first day as a Yankee.
Then why was he put in that spot, you moron.
Boone’s sole job as manager of the Yankees is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed. If he does that and it doesn’t work out, so be it. There isn’t a person in the world who would have questioned Holmes being used for a second inning if he couldn’t hold the lead and allowed the tying run to score or lost the game. He’s the best reliever on the team in the middle of a stretch in which he had thrown nine pitches in four days. Boone didn’t see it that way.
7. “He’s on about an 80-game pace in April, and with some of the attrition we’ve had in our bullpen, I wasn’t going to send my closer out,” Boone said.
Holmes was on a 75-game pace prior to his appearance last night, not 80. Holmes’ career high for appearances is 69, so his pace wasn’t far off a number he’s already previously accomplished. (For reference, Mariano Rivera averaged 67 games per season in his career, and three times pitched over 70 times. A 75-game pace is in no way outrageous.)
I wish Boone were joking about the attrition the Yankees have had in their bullpen, but he wasn’t. Jonathan Loaisiga went down for the season within the first week. Guess what Loaisiga is best at? Getting hurt. That’s what he does. The only “full” season he pitched in the majors was in 2021 and he was the best reliever in baseball that season. But outside of that his career has been marred by injuries. Not even three weeks ago, Boone himself said, “It’s been pretty much something every year that’s tripped him up.” Relying on Loaisiga to be the team’s best reliever was irresponsible given his injury history, much like it was irresponsible to rely on Aaron Hicks to be a starting out fielder on the team in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The Yankees continue to count on players with extensive injury histories and when they inevitably get injured, the front office and manager cry about the injuries and adversity the team has had to deal with, or in this case: attrition. The only other reliever the Yankees have had get hurt since the start of the season is Nick Burdi. He entered this season having thrown 15 1/3 career innings in the majors over six years because of injuries. I can’t believe he’s hurt again.
8. “I’ll do four outs this time of year,” Boone said, “but I wasn’t going to send him out for a second inning.”
If you don’t think Boone is detrimental to the success of the team he manages, don’t ever forget that sentence.
The evaluation of a pitcher should be done by pitches never by outs, and yet, Boone is making millions of dollars per year for the seventh straight year while doing the complete opposite. Not all outs or appearances are created equal. Holmes pitched a scoreless ninth inning in Milwaukee on Friday. He also pitched a scoreless ninth inning in Houston on Opening Day. He recorded three outs in both and pitched exactly one inning in both. To Boone, those two appearances are of equal value and energy.
Again, Holmes threw 10 pitches in the ninth. TEN! He threw nine pitches over the previous four days. The Yankees had the opportunity to win a game against a good team and Boone decided saving Holmes for a situation on a different day that may never happen was a better idea. The Yankees had a winnable game at hand and Boone decided he would rather take his chances of winning a made-up game in the future. That’s who’s managing the Yankees.
The best part is Holmes probably won’t be needed for a few days. He may not be needed for a week. If Boone wants to play the what-if game, let’s play it. He thinks he may need Holmes for an inning on Saturday, so he wasn’t going to push him for a second inning on Friday. Well, what if Holmes isn’t need on Saturday, or Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday? Then he’ll be used in a game on Wednesday no matter what the score is to get him work. Not even two weeks ago, Boone refrained from using Ian Hamilton in the extra-inning game in Cleveland that the Yankees led in and instead used Caleb Ferguson who blew the game and the Yankees lost. Three days later, after having still not pitched, Boone used Hamilton in a game the Yankees were trailing in because he needed the work.
9. “He’s got a lot of experience,” Boone said of Tonkin.
Yeah, a lot of experience sucking.
“That’s just where we were in the game,” Boone said, “with what we had left.”
The Yankees also had Victor Gonzalez available. I guess he was good enough to close out the Rays with a one-run lead on Sunday, but five days later isn’t good enough to close out the Brewers with a one-run lead. Let’s have the new guy that the Braves didn’t want back, the Mets gave up on twice and the Twins allowed to make one appearance before cutting ties.
10. I’m not mad at Tonkin. Not in the least bit. He’s not good. If he was, the Braves would have re-signed him after last season or the Mets or Twins would have kept him. He wasn’t put on waivers because he’s really good at closing out one-run games. He didn’t ask for the Yankees to offer him a major-league contract. He didn’t ask for Boone to put him into the game in that spot. It’s not his fault he blew the lead in the 10th and lost the game in the 11th.
It’s the Yankees’ fault for lacking bullpen depth when they knew they wouldn’t have Michael King, didn’t re-sign Wandy Peralta, knew of Loaisiga’s unbelievable injury history and knew they would be without Tommy Kahnle, Scott Effross and Lou Trivino to begin the season. And it’s Boone’s fault for putting him in the game. Unfortunately, that won’t be the last bad decision Boone is allowed to make.
