1. On Sept. 1, 2011, I thought I saw the lowest Baseball IQ play I would ever see from a Yankee when Nick Swisher laid down a sacrifice bunt with a runner on first and already one out in the inning. That play stood for nearly 14 years until Aug. 2, 2025, when Jazz Chisholm was picked off first base on a pop-up to the second baseman on the infield dirt. I didn’t think there would ever be a play that could top Chisholm’s idiotic baserunning decision, believing his former teammate would drop the ball on purpose to try and erase him on the bases. Until Wednesday.
Ali Sanchez’s extra-inning gaffe was so unbelievable, so ill-advised, so patently dumb that I can’t envision it ever being topped. I believe it will stand forever as the lowest Baseball IQ play I will ever see from a Yankee (though as long as Aaron Boone is at the helm, you can’t discount how fundamentally low the Yankees may stoop). To attempt to pick off a runner at third with two outs in a one-run game when all you need to do is retire the below-league-average Andrew Benintendi to win a crucial game is so incomprehensible that I still have a hard time believing it actually happened.
2. “Me and McMahon felt that he was a little slow getting back to the base,” Sanchez said. “I just made a bad throw. I’ve got to make a better throw.”
I don’t care if the runner (Munetaka Murakami) was 10 feet off the base with his back to Camilo Doval and his eyes closed it’s a throw that can’t be made. But it’s a throw that was made and it ruined the Yankees’ chance to win the game in that inning.
And Sanchez isn’t the only one to blame. Ryan McMahon played a part in the moronic play as well.
“It was there,” McMahon said, even though it wasn’t there. “Ali and I, we just didn’t execute. We did a shit job on both ends. I’ve got to block that and he’s got to get it there. It ended up hurting us.”
Sure enough, just like he defended Chisholm last August in Miami, Boone defended his catcher and third baseman.
“We’re big leaguers,” Boone said. “We’re not going to not do things.”
So because this is the big leagues, pickoff attempts at third base with the game on the line should be accepted? What the fuck are you talking about?
3. The Yankees held a 4-0 lead in the seventh with Cam Schlittler on the mound and had a 4-1 lead after the seventh. Paul Blackburn turned back into Paul Blackburn in the eighth and blew a three-run lead after allowing back-to-back home runs, erasing and wasting the 6 1/3 innings and two-hit start from Schlittler.
The Yankees stranded a runner on third with one out in the sixth and couldn’t score after a leadoff double in the seventh. Had they been able to come through with situational hitting in either of those spots, the game never goes to extras and they win. But the game did go to extras, and the worst road extra-inning team in the majors since the automatic runner was implemented six years ago, and the worst road extra-inning team in the majors this season lost another road extra-inning game.
If you think it’s a coincidence, randomness or chance that the Yankees continue to lose road extra-inning games under Boone, you’re a fool. When situational hitting, fundamentals, sound strategy, creativity and baseball smarts are at a premium, it’s no surprise the Yankees are at their worst.
4. The Yankees failed to score in the 10th despite the top of the lineup being up. Tim Hill was able to miraculously keep the White Sox off the board in the bottom of the inning with the winning run on third and no outs, but it didn’t matter, because after the Yankees took the lead in the 11th, Sanchez and McMahon decided to be “big leaguers” as their manager called them and threw away the game. The Yankees failed to score again in the 12th, even though they had runners on the corners and no outs, and then went on to lose in the bottom of the inning.
5. On Tuesday, the Yankees scored three runs in the second inning and never scored again. On Wednesday, the Yankees scored four runs in the first inning and never scored again until extra innings, when they plated one of six baserunners. It was a typical bad offensive performance in innings two through nine and the standard disturbing performance in extra innings.
6. Trent Grisham, who gets to lead off against right-handed starters no matter what, went 0-for-5 with a walk and two strikeouts. (Grisham has hit .156/.241/.312 in July with three hits since the All-Star break ended two weeks ago.) Ben Rice went 1-for-5 with a double, walk and two strikeouts. Jasson Dominguez went 0-for-4 with a walk and strikeout. Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-5 with a strikeout. Spencer Jones went 2-for-4 with a three-run home run and two strikeouts. Jazz Chisholm went 1-for-5 with two strikeouts. (Chisholm is 3-for-16 with 10 strikeouts on the road trip. Soon, he will hit a home run and the Yankees and YES will wonder if that is the home run that will get him going and then he will have an extended slump until the next home run and this cycle will continue until he’s no longer a Yankee.) McMahon went 1-for-5, Jose Caballero went 2-for-5 and Austin Wells went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. (We keep hearing how good Wells has looked over the last few weeks. He’s 1-for-11 on the road trip.)
7. The Yankees lost a game in which they had a four-run lead with eight outs to go and the best pitcher in the American League on the mound working a one-hitter. They lost a game in which they had the lead in the 11th inning and were one out away from the win. They lost a game in which they couldn’t situationally hit in the sixth, seventh, 10th and 12th innings, when they could have scored runs by making outs. They lost a game on a day in which the Rays won and the Red Sox won (on the road in extra innings for good measure). Their division deficit is back to three games in the loss column and their lead over the Red Sox is down to four games in the loss column.
8. It’s likely the game would have ended differently if Angel Chivilli, Brent Headrick and David Bednar had been available, but they weren’t because of recent workloads and usage. Bednar wasn’t available because he had pitched in the first two games of the series over the previous two days. If you remember, he was needed on Monday to get the last out of the game after Volpe dropped what should have been a game-ending pop-up.
9. The White Sox needed and wanted the game so badly that they had their best reliever Grant Taylor pitch across three innings, something he had never done in his 75 previous major-league appearances. Jordan Hicks — the White Sox’ version of Doval who throws 103 mph but can’t strike anyone out — ended up getting the win. Everything about the game except for the first inning and Schlittler was awful on what became the worst night of the season.
10. It’s up to Ryan Weathers to get the bad taste of Wednesday out of everyone’s mouth, though I’m not sure it’s a taste that can be removed with a single win. The combination of losing a Schlittler gem and losing on a day when the Rays and Red Sox won is going to take a long time to get over. I’m still not over the post-deadline, extra-inning game in Miami from a year ago that was the difference in the division. If the Yankees’ postseason seeding is impacted by a single game this year, I may never get over what took place at Rate Field on Thursday. Weathers pitched very well against the White Sox last month (6.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K, 1 HR) in a loss, and with the current state of the Yankees’ offense, it’s going to take an outing like that for the Yankees to win.
Last modified: Jul 30, 2026
