1. The weekend couldn’t have started out worse with Devin Williams blowing his second games in as many appearances. After blowing a four-run lead on Saturday in Tampa, Williams blew a one-run lead on Friday to the Blue Jays. It was the first time he entered a game with only one run to work with, and he gave up that run and two more without recording an out.
It took Clay Holmes five months of blown saves last season for him to be removed from the closer role. It only took Williams a month after allowing 20 baserunners and 12 earned runs in just eight innings.
“Being a closer is a position you have to earn and you have to keep earning to continue to be in that role,” Williams said. “I haven’t been doing that. It’s disappointing.”
The wild part about how bad Williams’ numbers are is that all of this damage has come without allowing a home run. Eight singles, four doubles, seven walks and a hit batter. An impressive combination of ineptitude.
Everyone treated the update of Williams’ removal from his role as news on Sunday. No one should be surprised that a pitcher who single-handedly cost the Yankees two games in six days was removed from being the closer when the team has another elite option already in place.
2. Luke Weaver has been exceptional since the beginning of last season. This season he has allowed three hits over 14 scoreless innings and has stranded all five inherited runners, and now he moves back into the ninth-inning role where he was at the end of last season.
“I prepare the same way,” Weaver said. “I try to not look at the situation any different. I need to get outs.”
I wish the Yankees would operate without a set closer. Because now Weaver will be attached to the ninth inning (and maybe used for an out or two in the eighth here and there), when he’s most valuable pitching when the game needs him the most. Maybe that’s in the sixth inning with two on and the heart of the order coming up. Maybe that’s in the seventh inning of a one-run game with the tying run in scoring position and the lineup turning over. I don’t like that Weaver is now the “ninth-inning guy” when the game can be ruined before he ever gets into it.
3. The Yankees answered back from their latest late-game collapse with a sweep of Sunday’s doubleheader. In the first game, Max Fried started, and when Fried starts, the Yankees win, and they did again, 11-2.
The Yankees trailed 1-0 in the bottom of the third before Kevin Gausman fell apart.
After a couple of walks and an Aaron Judge single to the wall in right (that Oswaldo Cabrera inexplicably didn’t score from second on in what was another example of the Aaron Boone Yankees’ sloppiness), Cody Bellinger hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game at 1. Gausman was an out away from getting out of the inning, but then walked Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe consecutively to score two runs. (You know you suck if you’re walking Chisholm and Volpe with the bases loaded.) The Yankees led 3-1 when Austin Wells came up with the bases loaded, worked a nine-pitch at-bat, and on that ninth pitch, hit a bases-clearing double to center field to break the game open. (It felt weird to experience the Yankees getting a hit to break a game open.)
With Fried on the mound, the rest of the game became a formality. The Yankees plated three more in the fifth, one in the sixth and one in the eighth. Fried finished the day with one earned run allowed over six innings, to remain undefeated on the season with a 1.43 ERA. The Yankees are 6-0 when he starts.
4. I was worried the Yankees used up all of their runs for the day in the first game, but Trent Grisham took care of that fear with a leadoff home run off of Chris Bassitt. It was the first home run Bassitt had allowed this season.
Clarke Schmidt — in his third start — allowed just one hit over five innings (but did walk four). That one hit was an Anthony Santander blast to the second deck in right.
With the game tied at 1 after five, Boone made the right decision to remove Schmidt from the game (90 pitches) rather than let him face Santander for a third time. The idea anyone would let Schmidt face Santander a third time seems outrageous as a possibility, but with Boone you never know.
Tim Hill pitched a scoreless sixth and Judge greeted Bassitt with a first-pitch home run to lead off the bottom half of the inning. After a Chisholm single, a Jasson Dominguez RBI double and a J.C. Escarra RBI single, the Yankees led 4-1.
Escarra added the first home run of his career in the eighth (a long home run into the right-field bleachers) in the 5-1 win, and we got a look at the new eighth-and-ninth-inning tandem of Fernando Cruz and Weaver. We actually got a look at the new sixth-seventh-eighth-ninth formula with Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., Cruz and Weaver. Those four combined to allow two hits and no walks with six strikeouts over four scoreless innings. The first game with Williams out of the late-and-close equation was a resounding success.
5. Volpe looked the best he has in nearly a month in the doubleheader (4-for-7 with a double and home run), but don’t let him fool you. His home run in the first game came off a Triple-A pitcher and we have seen this from Volpe before where he leads many to believe he has turned the corner only to then spend the next four weeks without an extra-base hit while playing every day. He needs to be consistently productive for an extended period of time for anyone to think he has figured out how to hit in the majors.
6. It wasn’t a great day for Bellinger (1-for-7), but what day is a great day for Bellinger? He was in the lineup for both games of the doubleheader, while Grisham sat the first one and proceeded to go 1-for-2 with a home run and two walks in the second one to reach base three times. Bellinger has been on base three times in a game once since March 29. He has one home run since March 29. But he and his .570 OPS are going to keep on playing because he’s owed more than $20M by the Yankees this year and Grisham is owed $5M. Owed money always trumps performance.
7. Judge finally hit his eighth home run of the season after getting screwed in Tampa and then hitting the top of the giant wall in the deepest part of the park in Cleveland over the last week. Judge should always bat second. Either Grisham or Ben Rice can lead off, but then it should be Judge and the other one who isn’t leading off behind Judge. So:
Grisham
Judge
Rice
or
Rice
Judge
Grisham
Either of those work, though I prefer the first one.
That makes the best possible lineup this:
Grisham, CF
Judge, RF
Rice, DH
Goldschmidt, 1B
Chisholm, 2B
Dominguez, LF
Wells, C
Volpe, SS
Cabrera, 3B
That is the optimal Yankees lineup at the moment, even if it’s not a lineup we will see because it doesn’t include Bellinger and has Volpe too low for Boone’s liking.
8. Dominguez quietly had a nice first month in his first full season as a major leaguer. He’s fifth on the teams in hits (despite being seventh in plate appearances), second on the teams in doubles (7), has less strikeouts than Chisholm and Volpe, has yet to be caught stealing (3-for-3), is hitting .315/.383/.500 against right-handed pitching and is hitting nine percent better than league average overall.
Hopefully as he gets more plate appearances against lefties (36) his .450 OPS against them will improve. It’s never going to be the .883 it is against righties, but something respectable in the 6s would be nice. Either way, I’m happy with Dominguez through the first month.
9. Offensively, I’m also happy with Cabrera, who’s hitting .278. Cabrera just needs to continue to hit for average consistently, draw the occasional walk and hit the occasional homer and he’ll be fine, as long as he plays solid defense. The solid defense part seems to be the hardest as Cabrera has been throwing balls to first base all over the place. He has five errors on the year, and while I think he’ll be fine, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the throws coming from the left side of the infield. For as good as Goldschmidt has been over there, things would look a lot worse if an average first baseman had been playing with the way Cabrera and Volpe throws have been.
10. It’s off to Baltimore for the first series of the season against the struggling Orioles. The Orioles are seven games under .500, in last place in the AL East and 6 1/2 games behind the Yankees with an AL-worst minus-39 run differential.
The Yankees will see Tomoyuki Sugano for the first time ever in the series opener. Sugano doesn’t strike anyone out with just nine strikeouts in 28 innings this season, but he doesn’t walk anyone either with five free passes so far.
The Orioles will see Will Warren for the first time ever in the series opener as well. Warren was solid in his last start, but he tends to alternate good starts with disastrous ones. He needs to attack the strike zone, believe in his stuff and let the ball get put in play. He can’t be afraid to pitch in the zone and he can’t nibble around the edges, which how he gets in trouble with deep counts and walks. Go out and challenge the Orioles and make them earn it. If he does that, he should be fine, like nearly every starter has been against the Orioles this season.
Last modified: Apr 28, 2025
