That’s a new Worst Loss of the Season™. The Yankees could not out-hit their own pitchers Wednesday night in the series finale against the last place Rangers. The final score was 12-10 bad guys. The Yankees have lost a series for the first time since going to Fenway Park six weeks ago. I guess things could be worse.
An Early Three-Run Lead
After getting shut down by Cole Hamels on Tuesday night, it was good to see the Yankees come out and put some runs on the board against Doug Fister in the very first inning. Brett Gardner popped up on the first pitch of the game and the Yankees still sent nine men to the plate and forced Fister to throw 33 pitches in that first inning. It was pretty great.
The Rangers certainly gave the Yankees some help in the three-run first inning. Aaron Judge reached with one out when first baseman Ronald Guzman couldn’t make the scoop on a short-hopped throw from Jurickson Profar, then Fister left a changeup up to Didi Gregorius, and he clubbed it out to right field for a quick 2-0 lead. To the action footage:
The Yankees created another run in that first inning while hitting just one ball out of the infield. Giancarlo Stanton reached on an infield single, Aaron Hicks poked a single to right, and Miguel Andujar reached on an infield single as well. The two infield singles sure looked like makeable plays to me, but neither was made. The three singles loaded the bases, and the dangerous Austin Romine brought a run home with a bases-loaded walk. He’s hitting .340/.415/.553 (165 wRC+). How about that?
A Blown Lead
Things unraveled quickly for CC Sabathia. After three no-hit innings to start the game, the Rangers tagged him for five runs in the fourth, which turned the 4-0 lead — Neil Walker socked a solo dinger in the fourth — into a 5-4 deficit. Walks and dingers, man. Walks and dingers. Shin-Soo Choo singled to center and Nomar Mazara golfed a two-run homer to right. Yuck. Sabathia hung a slider and a bad thing happened. Not the end of the world.
From there, it only got worse. Sabathia walked Profar (blah) and Ryan Rua (BLAH), and he got what he deserved for that when Guzman smacked a go-ahead three-run home run literally off the top of the right field wall. Similar to the Mazara homer, it was a slider that stayed up a little too much. Sabathia allowing two home runs to lefties in one inning is notable. He allowed two homers to lefties all last season. He averaged 2.5 homers to lefties a year from 2014-17. Then Mazara and Guzman got him in the fourth. Go figure.
The Rangers pushed across another two runs in the fifth inning, this time without the benefit of a homer. Choo hit a leadoff single and scored on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s quote-unquote triple. It was a soft little liner to right that both took a weird hop and was misplayed by Judge, and rolled to the wall. An infield single followed — Sabathia reached up and deflected a chopper, slowing it down enough that Gregorius didn’t have a play — to score another run, the seventh for Texas.
Sabathia’s final pitching line: 4.1 IP, 6 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 1 K, 2 HR on 91 pitches. Jonathan Holder was able to strand the runner at third in the fifth to spare Sabathia an eighth run. In his last three starts now Sabathia has allowed 15 runs and 26 baserunners in 13.1 innings, which is: Bad. He had a four-start disaster stretch around this time last year (22 runs in 20.2 innings) and hopefully this is just another one of those, and he snaps out of it soon.
Take The Lead, Again
It didn’t take the Yankees long to answer back after Mazara and Guzman gave the Rangers the lead in the fourth. They answered with a five spot in the top of the fifth. Walker singled with one out, Andujar doubled down the line, then Romine stroked a run-scoring single. Just like that, the game was tied and the Yankees were set up with two on and one out.
Because he hasn’t done enough lately, Gleyber Torres hit yet another home run, this one a three-run shot to give the Yankees the lead. Third straight game with a homer and his fifth homer in the last five games. Look at this pitch:
Yeah, that pitch was only 88 mph, but it was a sinker running back in, and Gleyber was still able to pull his hands in and muscle that out to left field. In an 0-2 count too. The kid is so good. So, so good. Gardner doubled and Judge hit a 471-foot homer after that, stretching the lead to 10-5. Even though it was only the fifth inning, that should’ve been enough. Should’ve. It wasn’t.
A Blown Lead, Again
Blowing a four-run lead and a five-run lead in the same game is about as terrible as it gets. Sabathia coughed up two runs in the fifth to get the Rangers to within 10-7. The sixth inning was the coup de grâce. Aaron Boone went to Chasen Shreve to match up against the lefty and he of course allowed a leadoff single to the lefty. A one-out single to Delino DeShields Jr. followed two batters later to put men on first and second.
At that point Boone went to David Robertson which, under normal circumstances, would be a fine move. Robertson’s someone you can count on to wiggle out of jams. Not so much recently though. His season to date can be split into three distinct periods:
- First two games: 2 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 0 K
- Next 16 games: 16.2 IP, 10 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 23 K
- Last four games: 3.2 IP, 3 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 6 BB, 4 K
That last set of games includes Wednesday night’s meltdown. He inherited runners on first and second from Shreve and walked Choo to load the bases. Choo walks a lot. It what he does. The more egregious mistake was walking the light-hitting Kiner-Falefa to force in a run. That was real bad. That cut the lead to 10-8. Six pitches later, Robertson threw this 92 mph meatball …
… to Profar, who split the right-center field gap and cleared the bases. The 10-8 lead became an 11-10 deficit. It’s easy to second guess the decision to go to Shreve — I guess the alternative was leaving Holder in, or going to Robertson to start the inning — but ultimately it’s on the players. Four-run lead and a five-run lead, and neither holds? It’s on the pitchers. Brutal start for Sabathia, bad work by Shreve, and a disaster by Robertson.
Leftovers
Because blowing those two leads wasn’t annoying enough, the Yankees went pretty quietly against the crummy Rangers bullpen. Stanton was hit by a pitch with one out in the eighth and that was the team’s only baserunner after Texas took the lead. Fourteen of the final 16 Yankees to bat after the Judge homer made outs. No Fighting Spirit this time, at least not in the late innings.
Dellin Betances worked two innings and allowed a dopey insurance run in the second inning. A strikeout/wild pitch put a runner on first, then two steals and a single later plated the run. Dellin mowed down the three batters he faced in the seventh though. He’s been really good lately. With Robertson struggling, Betances should be the Eighth Inning Guy™ until further notice.
Every starter had a hit and five of the nine starters had multiple hits. The offense did its job. Ten runs on 14 hits (seven for extra-bases) and one walk? And they went 4-for-11 (.364) with runners in scoring position? Can’t complain about the bats at all. Everyone up and down the lineup was really good.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Go to ESPN for the box score, MLB for the video highlights, and ESPN for the updated standings. Here’s our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the loss probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
The road trip is over and the Yankees are heading back to New York for a six-game homestand. But first, an off-day. The Yankees will rest Thursday before beginning a 14 games in 13 days stretch. They have that makeup doubleheader in Detroit coming up soon. Anyway, the homestand begins Friday night with the first of three against the Angels. Luis Severino will be on the mound for that one. The Halos haven’t announced their rotation yet, but lefty Andrew Heaney lines up to pitch that day.
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