The Yankees only won 2 out of 6 against the Mike Trout-less Angels team this season, which is not good! They lost 8 of the last 9, which is also not good. Because the Red Sox aren’t playing tonight, the Yankees still stay in the first place (albeit tied), which just seems like a miracle. They had a 5-1 lead tonight that evaporated away for a 10-5 loss. Gross.
Taking the lead
Things did not start great for the Yankees. Cameron Maybin drove the second pitch of the game over the left field fence for a home run. But don’t worry, the Yankee bats are in town! They tied it up on the bottom of the inning. With two outs, Aaron Judge and Matt Holliday walked, and Starlin Castro singled to drive a run in to make it 1-1.
The Yankees blew it open (or so it seemed) in the second with four runs. With one out, Chris Carter doubled to get on base. Ronald Torreyes followed it up with a line drive that hit Jesse Chavez on the hip and became a single. Ouch. That seemed painful for Chavez but thankfully, he was able to stay in the game. Brett Gardner drove Carter in with a force out at second and Aaron Hicks extended the inning with a single to make it runners on corners.
Aaron Judge, being the Aaron Judge he is, did what he does the best – working the count and hitting big home runs. On a 3-2 count, Judge got a 90 mph fastball down the middle and drove it into the Monument Park to make it 5-1 Yankees. It was his 25th of the year. A big lead early in the game! With your best starter out there, it would be a walk in the park for the Yankees for the rest of the game, right? Nope. That’s why you gotta play it out.
The Angels got two right back in the top of the third. The Angels got two baserunners on with a Cliff Pennington single and Maybin walk. Kole Calhoun grounded into a force out at second to make it two outs with runners on the corners. Albert Pujols got a hold of Severino’s slider for an RBI single to right field. Yunel Escobar followed it up with another RBI single to make it 5-3 Yankees. Ho-hum, a two run lead. It was still early in the game and you could bank on the Yankee bats on scoring more runs (they didn’t). Halos got another run in the sixth with an Escobar double and a Luis Valbuena RBI single. Heading into the seventh, Yankees had a 5-4 lead…
The meltdown
Top of the seventh, with Severino on the mound, the plan seemed clear: let him have one more inning, then have Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman take care of the last two, right? That is how it should have went, but the Angels had different ideas. Pennington singled to lead off the inning. Maybin followed it up with a grounder to second… that subtly changed its course right before Castro was about to catch it. As a result, the ball went past Castro as he stumbled for an error. Oof. That should have been an easy double play. To be fair, the ball did have a really funky hop and not a lot of infielders would have made such last-split-second adjustment to field it successfully. Anyways, that made it runners on corners with no out. Joe Girardi went to Chasen Shreve and that was it for Severino tonight.
The Angels tied the game up with a Calhoun sac fly to center. Girardi then played mix-and-match by putting in Betances to face Pujols. During the at-bat, Maybin attempted to steal second and Gary Sanchez’s throw sailed way over Castro and allowed Maybe to advance to third. Yeesh. Some sloppy baseball going on right here. Anyways, Pujols singled off Betances’ 99 mph fastball to make it 6-5 Angels. The next hitter, Yunel Escobar, walked to make it runners on first and second. With Valbuena batting, Betances unleashed a wild pitch way over and outside to put both runners on scoring position. One batter later, Andrelton Simmons jumped on the first pitch for a two-RBI double, making it 8-5 Angels. Welp. Betances had allowed only 9 hits this whole season prior to this game. He allowed two tonight. The Simmons double was also the first XBH he’s allowed all year. It was that kind of night.
The Angels tacked on two in the eighth against Domingo German. It involved even more sloppy baseball. With one out, Pennington doubled and a wild pitch advanced him to third. Maybin walked to make it runners on corners. During Calhoun’s at-bat, German made a pickoff attempt to first but the errant throw got past Carter, scoring Pennington and advancing Maybin to third. Calhoun followed it up with a sac fly to make it 10-5 Angels. The score remained this way for good. Definitely not the pinnacle of the Yankees season.
Leftovers
Chris Carter probably had the quietest 2-for-4 game that I can remember in awhile. He had that double to start the second-inning rally. Sure, the bats scored five but from the third inning till end, they only managed three baserunners. With the rotation and bullpen not performing to their strength lately, the team needs as much runs as possible.
Box score, standings and WPA graph
Here’s tonight’s box score, updated standings and WPA graph.
Source: FanGraphs
New series tomorrow. The Rangers are in town and we have a Japanese pitching matchup – Masahiro Tanaka will be on the mound against Yu Darvish.
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