1. What a comeback win for the Yankees on Wednesday night in Baltimore. Trailing late, the Yankees rallied against the struggling Orioles to win the three-game series and go into their scheduled day off feeling good.
Unfortunately, that isn’t true.
The Yankees didn’t come back to beat the last-place Orioles on Wednesday. Instead, they blew an early lead and then rolled over and lost the way they always do when they trail late in a game. These Yankees only blow late leads. They don’t overcome late deficits.
2. The reason they were in a deficit for most of the game was because of Carlos Carrasco. In his sixth start of the season, Carrasco put together his worst performance: 3.1 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 2 HR.
Carrasco blew an early two-run lead and allowed more hits (8) then he got outs (7), including two home runs. The Yankees lost 5-4 and lost a series to the team with the worst run differential in the American League.
3. It’s time for Carrasco to be designated for assignment. It’s more than time. Someone else needs to get an opportunity to start. I don’t care if it’s someone at Triple-A or Double-A or someone recently waived or released by another team. It’s hard to hear “So-and-so isn’t ready” from the same people employed by the Yankees who think Will Warren is ready and believe Carrasco is still a major leaguer. Something has to change with the rotation. The white flag can’t be waved in two of every five games between Carrasco (5.90 ERA) and Warren (5.63 ERA).
4. The way the torpedo bats don’t seem to work if you can’t make contact, it turns out when the Yankees’ offense isn’t facing an end-of-spring-training-scrap-heap pickup making his first start of the season like they did on Tuesday, they can’t score. Unless, Aaron Judge scores for them.
Judge was 3-for-3 with a walk in the game to raise his slash line to an absurd .427/.521/1.282. (If he were to go 0-for-50 beginning on Friday, he would still be hitting .299.) The first of his three hits was a two-run home run in the first inning, the second a single and the third an RBI single. He drove in three of the Yankees’ four runs with Paul Goldschmidt driving in the other with his first home run since March 29. Unfortunately, Judge didn’t get a fifth plate appearance in the game and was left watching the final out of the game from the on-deck circle because his trusty manager inexplicably decided to bat him third instead of second.
5. Judge, Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham combined to go 5-for-12 with two walks and all four of the Yankees’ RBIs. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-21 with three walks. That includes Pablo Reyes, who is not only a New York Yankee, but somehow started and batted seventh in this one. Remember last year when Boone batted Jahmai Jones leadoff and J.D. Davis fourth in the same game? This wasn’t exactly that, but it was a step just below that. (Jones hasn’t been in the majors since his time with the Yankees and Davis has a -36 OPS+ with the Angels this year. Yes, he’s 136 percent worse than league average.)
6. The Yankees had their chances to erase their deficit, but each time they got close, the sloppiness the Dodgers spent all offseason on a media tour publicly laughing about showed up.
With two outs in the fifth, Judge singled to bring up Ben Rice. Rice was getting a favorable matchup against a righty, but Judge got picked off first, and when Rice came back up to lead off the sixth, the righty was gone and he was greeted by the left-handed Keegan Akin, who struck him out with ease. Judge’s pickoff helped created a nice little sixth-inning lane for Akin, and Akin thanked him by striking out the side.
When the Yankees cut the deficit to one in the top of the fifth, they gave it right back in the bottom of the fifth when Anthony Volpe booted a double play ball. What exactly is it that Volpe does well? His offense is abysmal. Every error of his seems to come in a big moment, and with three stolen bases in six attempts this season, he’s no longer a threat on the bases. When Volpe led off the eighth with a walk, it seemed like the perfect time for him to run and put pressure on the defense representing the tying run. Instead, all he did was his jumps and hops around the bag, acting like he may go, only to never go and never advance past first.
7. That would be the last baserunner of the game for the Yankees, as they went quietly in the eighth and as quiet as anyone could possibly go in a 1-2-3 ninth. Judge getting left on-deck because he was inexplicably batting third was the icing on the cake in the ninth, but the cake was Oswald Peraza getting to bat for himself against the hard-throwing righty Felix Bautista.
8. For a moment it seemed like Rice may have hit a go-ahead, two-run home run in the seventh. After Judge singled with two outs, Gregory Soto threw a wild pickoff attempt to allow Judge to go to second.
“A gift,” David Cone said.
“Can they capitalize on it?” Joe Girardi asked.
No, they couldn’t. Rice flew out to right on a ball that was easily caught, but a ball Michael Kay thought was going to travel 570 feet and break a window on the warehouse across the street from the park with the way he got excited when it left Rice’s bat.
It was a forgettable day for Rice at the plate, as he went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. I don’t think there’s anyone in the league who takes more check swings against left-handed pitching than Rice, and he always goes around. If you’re a lefty who throws Rice anything other than breaking balls away, you’re a fool.
It’s not like Rice is the only Yankee who can’t hit lefties. Pretty much the entire lineup can’t. It’s how they lost a game started by Cade Povich. It’s how they got embarrassed by Andrew Heaney and stifled by Kris Bubic and had no chance against Tarik Skubal. The only lefty the Yankees have been able to hit this season was Nestor Cortes, whose elbow had been hanging by a thread dating back to last season.
9. A 3-3 week against the Blue Jays and Orioles isn’t anything to get excited about. One of the three losses was by two runs (the game in which they blew a one-run lead in the ninth to the Blue Jays), and the two losses to the Orioles were both by one run. The Yankees are 6-10 in games decided one or two runs and 12-3 in games decided by three-plus runs. That’s not a coincidence. The larger the gap in score, the less managing, situational hitting and fundamentals matter. At some point you would think the Yankees would come back and win of these late-and-close games. But when the going gets tough for these Yankees, they get going.
10. Now they’re going home with a day off on Thursday and this frustrating loss lingering until Friday’s series opener against the Rays. The Rays won’t be throwing any Kyle Gibson types this weekend in the Bronx, so it would be welcome if others in the lineup outside of the top third of the order could hit actual major-league pitching. If not, Max Fried is pitching Friday, so the Yankees are assured at least win one game this weekend.
Last modified: Apr 30, 2025
