1. Here is what I wrote about Monday’s Orioles starter prior to the game:
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.
After striking out nine in his first five starts in the majors, Sugano struck out EIGHT Yankees over five innings in what was an offensive performance from the offense. As advertised, Sugano only walked one in his start and managed to get every big out.
2. Paul Goldschmidt struck out in the first to leave two on and after a Jazz Chisholm hit by pitch, Anthony Volpe left the bases loaded.
In the third, the Yankees had first and third and one out and couldn’t get on the board as Goldschmidt struck out again and Chisholm did the same.
In the fourth, Jasson Dominguez was stranded, and in the fifth, Trent Grisham was as well when Goldschmidt was robbed of a two-run home run by Cedric Mullins.
“We pressured him,” Aaron Boone said of Sugano. “We had some chances and just couldn’t break through on him.”
In typical Yankees fashion, the team wasn’t able to score a run until the seventh, and added two more in the eighth, in what was the latest rally-enough-to-make-you-think-they-may-come-back-and-win-only-to-lose effort.
3. And in typical Will Warren fashion, the right-hander followed up a promising start with a miserable one.
Warren immediately put himself in a jam in the first with second and third and no outs, but miraculously escaped to momentarily make you think he may be figuring out pitching in the majors. That thought was short-lived as he allowed a two-out rally in the second to score a run and then in the fourth, he walked the first two hitters of the inning with his nibbling act and hung a 2-2 sweeper to Ryan O’Hearn that was crushed over the high wall in right for a three-run home run and a 4-0 Orioles lead.
Let’s go through what I wrote about Warren prior to Monday’s game:
Warren was solid in his last start, but he tends to alternate good starts with disastrous ones.
Last start: 5 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
Monday’s start: 3.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 1 HR
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.
Two costly walks to begin the third that led to the three-run home run.
4. “It’s been up and down,” Warren said. “I think it’s been a mix where you have some good ones in there.”
Warren has made six starts this season. Three have been good to solid and three have outright disasters. He has done just enough to continue to be part of the rotation despite his 8.14 ERA in 12 career starts because he shows promise at times and because the Yankees have no one else. They traded their starting pitching depth to the Padres for Juan Soto, and then were unable to re-sign Soto. They banked on Gerrit Cole who missed a portion of last season with elbow issues to be healthy moving forward only for him to now be out until next summer. They brushed aside Luis Gil’s entire career being marred by injuries, and did the same with Clarke Schmidt who is 29 and has made more than 16 starts in a season once. Warren is in the rotation because there is no alternative. The same goes for Carlos Carrasco and the same went for Marcus Stroman before his supposed knee injury.
5. Ryan Yarbrough was fantastic in relief of Warren: 3.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. Yarbrough hadn’t pitched in a week and after throwing 53 pitches will likely be down for about another week. I would be all for sending Warren down and using Yarbrough as an opener.
6. It’s going to be hard for the Yankees to put together extended winning streaks because of their rotation, considering you don’t know what you’re going to get the 80 percent of the time Max Fried isn’t starting. It’s also going to be hard because you don’t know which version of the offense is going to show up as well. Is it the version that chased Kevin Gausman and got to Chris Bassitt? Or the version that can’t hit the starting pitcher with the worst strikeout rate in the majors?
7. Chisholm had another banner night at the plate: 0-for-3 with three strikeout and a hit by pitch. Chisholm is now hitting .173 on the season. To put into perspective how bad that is (and how good Judge has been), if Judge were to go 0-for-150 beginning tonight, he would then have the same batting average as Chisholm.
8. Another blah game from Bellinger (1-for-4 with a walk), who struck out to end the game. I don’t think there was a person in the world (not even Bellinger himself) who thought he was going to put the ball in play against Felix Bautista in his ninth-inning at-bat.
9. A day after being removed from the closer role, Devin Williams found himself in a one-run game in the eighth. You would think Boone would have found a way to get him into Sunday’s first-game blowout to get some work in. Nope. Not Boone. Throw him right back into a winnable, one-run game in the eighth. Williams pitched his third 1-2-3 inning in 11 outings and even got three whiffs and a strikeout. He’s going to need to do that for about a month before I want to see him in a late-game situation with a lead.
“It’s just little things here that can you your mojo and remind you just how darned good you are this game,” Boone said of Williams. “Hopefully, it’s a step in the right direction.”
I don’t think it’s possible for Williams to go anywhere other than the right direction, after allowing 20 baserunners and 12 earned runs in his first eight innings of the season.
10. The Orioles have the worst run differential in the American League. Their lineup is struggling and their starting pitching sucks. And yet, they won the first game of the series. The Yankees had their opportunities to win between stranding runners, leaving a runner on third with less than two outs and having a two-run home run robbed, but they still lost. They need a win on Tuesday with Carlos Rodon going against Kyle Gibson in his season debut because Carrasco goes on Wednesday. No one wants to be looking at needing to win a Carrasco start to salvage the third game of a series, especially going against the Yankees’ kryptonite in the series finale: a left-hander.
Last modified: Apr 29, 2025
