Yankee pitching implodes in a 12-1 loss to the Royals

It’s not often you see a game where Chris Young (the pitcher) is more unhittable than Michael Pineda. Well, that’s just baseball. It’s also not often you see a game where Yankee pitching seemed to have imploded despite starting their staff ace. It wasn’t just the pitching though – the bats went pretty quiet, collecting only five hits and a run. Overall, this was a match that made me want to fall asleep early to forget.

Oh yea, they’ve also lost four in a row. That’s not pleasant either.

5.1 IP, 10 hits allowed, 1 K,

If I told you before the game that Big Mike was going to pitch this poorly, would you have believed it? Probably not. Well, the Royals are very contact-oriented team. Entering tonight’s game, their hitters have the lowest strikeout rate with a 14.6% – the next lowest in the list is the Braves at 16.7%. I didn’t think he was going to strike out 16 hitters again but not gonna lie, it was just weird to see him not punch out anyone until the fifth inning.

Well, no strikeouts aside, up to five innings, Pineda was throwing a decent start – he had allowed only 2 runs and the score was a close (2-1). In the sixth inning, however, all heck broke loose. Alex Gordon doubled to lead off the inning and Pineda induced a grounder from Salvador Perez, which advanced the runner to third.

With one out and a runner on third, the Yankees hoped to prevent a run by playing infield and outfield in, but Omar Infante drove a meatball into way deep outfield for a RBI triple. 3-1 Royals. You’d think that allowing a booming XBH to a hitter with 68 wRC+ would get Pineda out of the game, but Joe Girardi let him face Paulo Orlando. The outfielder hit a single to drive in another run and then Pineda was out. Engh.

I’m not too worried about Big Mike after this start. He’s a good pitcher and good pitchers do go through rough patches because they are human. His velocity wasn’t outrageously low or anything. Sometimes hitting beats good pitchers and that’s pretty much how I see it happened tonight.

Bullpen Implosion

So we have Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller, great! But Yankees didn’t really get to use either tonight. I was hoping that David Carpenter would somehow get the Yankees out of the jam at 4-1, but, alas, life isn’t perfect. He induced a grounder that Stephen Drew fielded, but the second baseman botched the toss to Didi Gregorius – all runners were safe. Girardi didn’t waste any time and pulled the right-hander out for Justin Wilson. Welp.

The lefty faced five hitters and got only one out. It took three singles and a walk for Joe to pull him out and put in… Jose Ramirez. Mercifully, the young righty got New York out of the inning but he allowed three more runs in the next inning before getting substituted for Branden Pinder. So when it was all said and done, it was seven earned runs allowed by the Yankee bullpen in 2.2 IP. They also allowed three walks and struck out only one. As Pusha T would say, yuck.

Leftovers:

Yea this was a pretty forgettable game offense-wise. Mark Teixeira did go 2-for-3, A-Rod hit that booming double to lead off the fourth inning and scored the lone Yankee run and… besides that, meh.

Box Score, WPA, Standings:

Here’s the box score and updated standings. And, of course, WPA.

Source: FanGraphs

Yankees have a 7:10 PM EST start tomorrow. The big lefty Sabathia goes against Danny Duffy. First win since Monday or a five-game losing streak? We shall see.