1. Nearly a year ago, on May 22, the Yankees won a 1-0 weekday afternoon, getaway day game over the Rangers at Yankee Stadium. The one run in that game was a Jorbit Vivas solo home run — the only home run of his career. It came against Nathan Eovaldi, who otherwise shut the Yankees down for six innings.
Wednesday’s 3-0 loss to the Rangers felt a lot like that game in terms of Eovaldi’s performance and the Yankees’ offense being lifeless against him. The Yankees managed five hits — all singles — in the shutout loss, further proving that if Ben Rice and Aaron Judge don’t hit the ball over the wall, the offense is in a world of shit.
2. Rice had three of the Yankees’ five hits, Cody Bellinger had one and Jose Caballero picked up an infield single. The rest of the Yankees went 0-for-26 with a walk and eight strikeouts. If that sounds familiar it’s because in Tuesday’s game, the Yankees not named Bellinger, Judge and Austin Wells went 0-for-26.
3. Even with the loss, the Yankees finished their nine-game road trip with a 7-2 record, winning all three series against the Red Sox, Astros and Rangers. In seven of the nine games the offense scored four runs or fewer. The wins were stacked because of the starting pitching, not the bats.
4. I thought Wednesday’s game was a good spot for Elmer Rodriguez to make his major-league debut, considering the Rangers’ offense isn’t very good. But it was Rodriguez who wasn’t very good. Not everyone can come up and be Cam Schlittler and it’s not like he was Greg Weissert-debut bad walking and hitting everyone, throwing balls to the backstop and committing balks. The scouting report on Rodriguez was a great fastball and extremely good command. Instead, Rodriguez walked four, hit Alejandro Osuna and nearly hit Osuna twice (the Rangers unsuccessfully challenged the near-hit by pitch). There was traffic on the bases throughout Rodriguez’s four-plus innings and after escaping jams in the first and second innings, he wasn’t able to escape a third jam in the fifth. He left the game with two runs in and two on and no outs in the fifth.
“Obviously, not the results [I wanted],” Rodriguez said. “I feel like I needed to execute a little bit better.”
5. It didn’t matter if Rodriguez recorded just the 12 outs he recorded, or if he pitched into the eighth inning because the offense gave a textbook getaway-day-at-the-end-of-a-nine-game-road-trip effort. Eovaldi got blasted by the Athletics five days earlier and had pitched well in just two of his six starts this season, but that didn’t stop him from mowing down the Yankees like he always has since leaving them.
6. Eovaldi didn’t go to a three-ball count in the game until he faced Trent Grisham with two outs in the fifth. Grisham did nothing with that count on his way to another 0-for-4 day. Grisham finished April with two multi-hit games in the month. His on-base percentage is down to .298, and yet, there’s no end in sight of him batting leadoff ahead of Rice and Judge. Why not just move Rice and Judge each up one place in the lineup? That makes too much sense for someone as dense, stubborn and clueless as Aaron Boone. The idea that the Yankees are giving the most possible plate appearances to Grisham and his .610 OPS is rather ridiculous.
7. With Randal Grichuk getting designated for assignment it seemed like this really may be the chance for Jasson Dominguez to steal playing time from Grisham. Unfortunately, Dominguez got drilled by Eovaldi and had to leave the game. More reason to despise Eovaldi. Dominguez has had some really bad injury luck. If not for tearing his elbow near the end of the 2023 season, he would have gone into 2024 as a starter, and the Yankees don’t idiotically trade for and play Alex Verdugo. Now seemingly about to be a part of the team after spending an unnecessary month in Triple-A, Dominguez gets hit by a pitch that forces him out of a game and who knows the extent of the injury after initial X-rays were “inconclusive.” Who reads the Yankees’ X-rays? A radiologist or Boone?
8. Not only did Grichuk get DFA’d, but George Lombard Jr. was promoted to Triple-A. Lombard hit .312/.400/.571 in 20 games at Double-A this season. The resolution to the failed Anthony Volpe experiment is now one level away from the majors. That’s a good thing because the Yankees need capable bats and Lombard Jr. looks like he could really be one.
9. The Yankees aren’t winning a championship with Grisham reverting back to his pre-2025 self, Jazz Chisholm swinging for the fences with every swing in any count and any situation and Ryan McMahon having a better chance of reaching base if he goes to the plate without a bat. Add in the inevitable benching of Jose Caballero for Volpe and the Yankees will be playing with close to half of the lineup being an automatic each game. Rice and Judge will have to really replicate the Juan Soto-Judge combination of two years ago to make up for all of the dead wood in the lineup.
10. I don’t expect anything to change with the lineup this weekend against the Orioles because Boone makes the lineup and he likely sees a 20-11 record and thinks nothing needs to change. He doesn’t see that record for what it is, which is the Yankees boasting the best 1-2 rotation punch in the league with Schlittler and Max Fried and the best 1-2 lineup punch in the league with Rice and Judge. Will Warren and Ryan Weathers have been good, Caballero (who again is about to be benched) is playing above his career slash line and Tim Hill and Brent Headrick have been reliable, but that’s about it in terms of secondary contributions throughout the roster.
Last modified: Apr 30, 2026
