All things considered, I’m not sure I could’ve asked the Yankees for a better ending to the RAB era. With RAB set to close its internet doors Monday, the Yankees went out and clobbered the Giants in Sunday’s series finale to finish the three-game series sweep. The final score was 11-5. The Yankees have won eleven of their last 13 games.

Two In The First, Two In The Second, Two In The Third
The Yankees have played a lot of bad teams in the early going this season. The Orioles, the Tigers, the White Sox, the Royals … the Yankees have played them all already. The Giants have more name value on their roster than those four teams combined, but gosh, they are every bit as bad based on what we saw this weekend. Every bit as bad on the field and way more expensive. San Francisco has some onerous contracts, for sure.

It did not take long for the Giants to show their badness on Sunday. DJ LeMahieu opened the game with a single to left, then righty Dereck Rodriguez nibbled the bases loaded. He walked Luke Voit on six pitches and Brett Gardner on five pitches, and only six of those eleven pitches were fastballs. Rodriguez kept trying to get Voit and Gardner to chase something soft and they wouldn’t do it. Three batters, three baserunners.

Gary Sanchez gave Rodriguez and the Giants the double play ball they needed. Tailor-made 6-4-3 double play ball. Instead, the usually sure-handed Brandon Crawford bobbled the grounder and zero outs were recorded. The Giants did turn the 4-6-3 double play on Gleyber Torres’ broken bat grounder, but another run scored to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. It’s nice being on the other end of those sloppy mistakes, isn’t it?

The second inning opened with two quick baserunners (Gio Urshela single, Tyler Wade walk) and two quick outs (Domingo German strikeout, LeMahieu fly out). For whatever reason, Giants catcher Erik Kratz tried to pick Urshela off second base with a snap throw, but no one was ready for it. Certainly not the infielder at second. The throw sailed into center, the runners moved up, and Voit brought them home with a single against the shift.

Two runs in the first after the botched double play, two runs in the second after Kratz’s ill-advised snap throw, and two runs in the third on a Gleyber homer. Rodriguez walked Sanchez to start the inning and Torres parked one in the left-center field seats. This is one of the few times the behind-the-plate camera angle is #ActuallyGood:

Good gravy Oracle Park is huge. Look at that left-center field gap. Also, the way Gleyber smiled and pointed at the dugout as he rounded first base leads me to believe he called his shot there. Either he called it or whoever he pointed called it. Pretty cool. The Yankees worked Rodriguez over: 3 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 4 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 1 HR on 81 pitches. Two of the three strikeouts were German, the opposing pitcher. Eighty-one pitches to get three outs. Lordy.

German Hits A Wall
As great as he’s been, Domingo German was not going to sustain a sub-2.00 ERA all season. That’s just not happening in Yankee Stadium and in the AL East in general. At some point the correction was coming. It came in the sixth inning Sunday and it came at a good time. If you’re going to give up four runs in one inning, the best time to do it is when your team has given you an 8-0 run cushion.

German cruised through the first five innings against an admittedly terrible Giants lineup. He retired 15 of the first 17 batters he faced and the two baserunners were a single by the opposing pitcher (Rodriguez) and a Voit error. Voit had more time than he realized when he rushed and airmailed a throw to German covering first base. Only three of those first 17 batters managed to hit the ball out of the infield. German made it look easy. Very easy.

The wheels kinda came off in that sixth inning. Tyler Austin worked a hard-fought ten-pitch leadoff walk, Cameron Maybin misread a ball off the wall in left field, German hung a two-strike breaking ball to Kevin Pillar … just not a lot went right in that sixth inning. After throwing 59 pitches in the first five innings, German needed 28 pitches to get through that sixth inning. His final line: 6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 4 K. Looks worse than it was.

Even after seemingly hitting a wall in that sixth inning, German owns a 2.56 ERA (2.79 FIP) with strong strikeout (25.8%) and walk (7.3%) rates through 32.1 innings. He walked five batters in five innings in his first start, remember. Only four walks in 27.1 innings since. I’m not sure the homer rate will last forever (0.57 HR/9 and 6.3% HR/FB), but gosh, German looks so confident right now. It really seems like something has clicked. Exciting!

Leftovers
Second homer in as many days for Sanchez, who hit a two-run shot deep into the left field bleachers in the sixth inning. Maybe a row or two from the concourse. It wasn’t as long (430 feet) as Saturday’s grand slam (467 feet), but it looked longer because it was closer to the line and nearly cleared the bleachers. Even after missing time with the calf injury, Gary still leads all catchers with eight home runs.

The Giants made some more mistakes in the ninth inning to help the Yankees score three more insurance runs. Maybin (one run) and Wade (two-run) both had run-scoring singles that inning. Three hits and a walk for Voit, who’s up to .283/.397/.538 (149 wRC+) on the season. Two hits and a walk for Torres, two hits for Urshela before getting hurt (hit-by-pitch in hand), and two hits for Thairo Estrada after coming off the bench to replace LeMahieu (knee inflammation).

Pretty easy afternoon for the bullpen, even after the Giants hung a four-spot on German in the sixth. Jonathan Holder went 1-2-3 in the seventh, Tommy Kahnle pitched around a walk in the eighth, and Joe Harvey allowed a garbage time solo homer in the ninth after the offense tacked on those insurance runs. Nice and easy game for the relief crew. Thanks for that.

And finally, make it a 39-game on-base streak for Voit. It is the longest active on-base streak in baseball — Freddie Freeman is second and he extended his streak to 28 games Sunday afternoon — and it is the longest streak by a Yankee since Mark Teixeira had a 42-gamer in 2010.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
MLB.com has the box score and video highlights and ESPN has the updated standings. Here’s our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
For RAB, one final day of posts. Tomorrow is the site’s final day. For the Yankees, it’s an off-day. They’ll spend Monday’s off-day in Phoenix before opening a quick two-game series with the Diamondbacks on Tuesday. CC Sabathia and righty Merrill Kelly are the scheduled starters for Tuesday night’s opener.

Another day, another win for the makeshift 2019 Yankees. Saturday afternoon’s 6-4 win over the Giants was their tenth win in their last dozen games. The game was not as close as the final score would lead you to believe. It wasn’t until garbage time that the Giants made noise.

Kraken Attackin’
When Yankee Stadium is your home ballpark, it can be a shock to the system when you watch baseball in Oracle Park. The park is enormous — absolutely beautiful, but enormous — and it gobbles up long fly balls. Outfielders camp under balls that, off the bat, look like they have a chance to get out in the Bronx. Yankee Stadium and Oracle Park are polar opposites. I’m not saying one is better than the other. They just play very differently.

The Yankees scored their first run against Derek Holland in true National League fashion. Cameron Maybin worked a leadoff walk and two batters later J.A. Happ bunted him up to second base. The no-longer-slumping DJ LeMahieu got the run home with a hard-hit grounder to third base. Evan Longoria ranged to his left and appeared to be in position to make the play, but the ball clanked off his glove and carried on into left field. Maybin scored with ease.

It wasn’t until the fifth inning that the Yankees broke the game open. The bottom of the order set the table for the order. Maybin beat out an infield leadoff single and Thairo Estrada poked a single to right. Happ attempted to bunt the runners up, but it wasn’t a good bunt, and the Giants got the force out at third. No matter, LeMahieu walked to loaded the bases with one out.

All game long — he’s been doing it to every team all season, really — Holland busted the Yankees’ right-handed hitters inside with fastballs, similar to CC Sabathia’s pitching style. He crowds them inside, and home plate umpire Jim Reynolds was giving Holland the inside corner, so he kept going there. Look at his called strike locations to righty batters:

Hey, if the ump is giving you a few inches inside, keep going there. Holland did exactly that to Luke Voit with the bases loaded and he went too far inside — Voit had to skip out of the way of one inside fastball, then took another to the knee to force in a run. He’s fine, thankfully. Shook it right off. The Voit hit-by-pitch gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead.

Up to that point in the game, Gary Sanchez was 0-for-9 with seven strikeouts since returning from the injured list, including 0-for-2 with two strikeouts against Holland earlier in the game. Righty Trevor Gott had been warming, but because Holland handled Sanchez well in their first two at-bats, Giants manager Bruce Bochy stuck with the lefty with the bases loaded. Holland got ahead in the count 1-2. Gary then uncleared the bases.

Two things there. One, don’t miss the casual “I don’t need this anymore” bat flip. Bat drop, more accurately. And two, look where catcher Buster Posey wanted the pitch and where it wound up. Holland was supposed to bust Sanchez inside yet again with another fastball, but he missed out over the plate, and Gary hit it halfway up the bleachers. The too close for comfort 2-0 lead was now a comfortable 6-0 lead.

At 467 feet, Sanchez’s grand slam is the longest grand slam since Statcast launched in 2015. It is also the fourth longest homer in baseball this year, grand slam or otherwise. And it is Sanchez’s first career grand slam too. I would’ve guessed he hit one at one point, but nope. Gary went into this game with a career .375/.361/.438 batting line with the bases loaded. I do enjoy a good AVG > OBP slash line.

Seven Innings For Happ
Everything was all set up for J.A. Happ to have success Saturday. The Giants are a terrible offensive team — they went into this game ranked 29th in AVG (.210), 30th in OBP (.273), 28th in SLG (.345), and 30th in wRC+ (64) — and Oracle Park is huge. Big ballpark, bad offense, and Happ took advantage. Five singles and no walks in seven shutout innings. Only two strikeouts, but an 85.4 mph average exit velocity allowed. Weak contact all day.

Only once in his seven innings did the Giants really threaten against Happ. Gerardo Parra led off the third inning with a single to left and Tyler Austin pulled a two-out single to left. Brandon Belt pulled a hard-hit ground ball into the shift and LeMahieu made an excellent play to end the inning. LeMahieu made an excellent play at second and Voit made an excellent scoop at first base. Check it out:

Another leadoff single (Posey) and two-out single (Crawford) put two men on base in the seventh inning, but Sanchez had broken the game open by then, so it wasn’t a huge deal. Parra lined out softly to shortstop to end the inning and the threat and Happ’s afternoon. At one point he retired 14 of 15 batters faced and he did it with ease. I don’t remember one difficult defensive play during that 15-batter stretch.

Happ’s final line: 7 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K on 95 pitches. He went back to throwing more four-seamers (38) than two-seamers (seven), though he also threw a ton of changeups. Thirty-seven of them. Happ threw 39 changeups in his first five starts combined this year. Maybe it’s a classification issue and Statcast confused some two-seamers for changeups? His average changeup velocity was 86.6 mph and it topped out at 88.7 mph. That’s a little high. Well, whatever. As expected, Happ is the first Yankees starter to complete seven innings in multiple starts this season.

Leftovers
After a great 1-2-3 eighth inning, Luis Cessa made things unnecessarily interesting in the ninth. Two singles and a three-run homer (Yangervis Solarte) and a solo homer (Erik Kratz) turned a 6-0 lead into a 6-4 lead. Gah. Aroldis Chapman had to get the final out. Cessa allowed two earned runs in his first 12.1 innings this season before that messy ninth inning. Eventually the Yankees (or some other team) will turn Cessa into one-inning air-it-out reliever and be happy they did.

Three hits and a great defensive play up against the netting in foul territory for Gio Urshela. He is now 12-for-31 (.387) in his last eight games and he’s hitting .327/.387/.491 (133 wRC+) on the season overall. Urshela’s history suggests the other shoe is going to drop at some point, but wouldn’t it be something if keeps this up? Would be cool. LeMahieu had a single and two walks as the leadoff hitter.

And finally, Voit extended his on-base streak to 38 games with his bases loaded hit-by-pitch. It is the longest such streak by a Yankee since Mark Teixeira had a 42-gamer in 2010. Voit’s 13-game hitting streak did end though. First hitless game for him since the first game of the White Sox series.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
For the box score and video highlights, go to MLB.com. ESPN has the updated standings and here’s our Bullpen Workload page. Here is the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
The final game of the RAB era (!). Hard to believe. The Yankees and Giants will wrap up this three-game interleague series Sunday afternoon. That’s another 4:05pm ET start. Domingo German and Dereck Rodriguez are the scheduled starting pitchers. Dereck is the son of Hall of Famer and Yankees legend Ivan Rodriguez.

Thursday’s blown four-run lead and series finale loss to the Angels is just that: one loss. Not the start of a losing streak. The Yankees rebounded with a not necessarily pretty 7-3 win over Madison Bumgarner and the Giants at Oracle Park on Friday night. They’ve won nine of their last eleven games.

More Like BadMum Amirite?
Bumgarner is not the pitcher he was two or thee years ago — I wonder how many casual fans will still want him at the trade deadline following this game? — and the Yankees wore him out Friday night. He pitched in six different innings and the Yankees scored in four of them, including a first inning two-spot. DJ LeMahieu doubled, Gleyber Torres doubled, and Cameron Maybin singled. Bang bang bang. Bumgarner threw 33 pitches in that first inning.

The Yankees scored their third run of the game in the third inning. Luke Voit shot a single to right field and Torres … bunted him to second? What? I get that he might’ve been bunting for a hit there, but goodness, I don’t like it. He’s the No. 3 hitter, Bumgarner had been giving up good contact all night, and Gleyber is one of the few legitimate MLB bats in the lineup. Yes, I know the replacements have been great, but still. Swing away, young man.

The bunt worked, at least. Torres moved Voit up and Cleanup Hitter Gio Urshela got the run in with a single to left. LeMahieu singled and scored on Voit’s double to right in the fifth inning, then three straight one-out singles potted a run in the sixth. Austin Romine to left, Mike Tauchman to left, Thairo Estrada to right. I’m glad we got to experience The Summer of Thairo at the big league level before RAB shut down. That’s pretty cool.

Bumgarner needed 104 pitches to get 17 outs and give up five runs on eleven hits. First time a single pitcher has given up at least eleven hits to the Yankees since Martin Perez last August. Also, the Yankees fouled away 27 pitches, their most against a single pitcher since last August, when they did it to … Jacob deGrom? Jacob deGrom. Bumgarner had allowed 27+ foul balls in a start only six times in the last three years. At-bat after at-bat was a battle.

The Yankees went 5-for-11 (.455) with runners in scoring position with Bumgarner on the mound and, really, they let him off the hook too. There was the unnecessary Torres bunt and Voit was easily thrown out trying to tag up at second and go to third on Gleyber’s fly ball in the fifth. Two gift outs right there. I swear, every day I look at the lineup and wonder how the Yankees are going to score, but they keep making it work. This season has been pretty fun so far and most definitely not in the way I expected.

Paxton Labors Early, Labors Late
How bad have the Giants been offensively this season? They went into Friday’s series opener with a .272 OBP and a .349 SLG as a team. For reference, Austin Romine went into the game with a .268 OBP and a .350 SLG in 2019. No offense to Romine, he’s carved out a nice little career for himself as a backup catcher, but imagine watching a team that collectively hits like Romine? Oy vey.

Naturally, the terrible hitting Giants scored in the first inning against James Paxton. Former Yankee Tyler Austin punched a single to right field, Brandon Belt lined a double to right field, and Buster Posey lifted a sacrifice fly to right field. Voit came maybe a few inches away from making the leaping catch on Belt’s line drive. If he makes the catch, he steps on first base for an inning-ending double play. Game of inches. Some stats:

• It was the first run the Giants scored in the first inning this year.
• It was the first earned run the Giants scored in the first inning in 44 (!) games.
• Belt’s double was their first extra-base hit in the first inning this year.

This isn’t even a Giants blog and I am still compelled to note those stats. Voit hit two first inning home runs in the Angels series! The Giants did not have a first inning run or a first inning extra-base hit this season until Friday. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around that. It is bonkers. I’d be more upset about the Yankees allowing San Francisco’s first first inning run (and extra-base hit) had they hadn’t won the game.

The Giants made Paxton work in the first inning and in the sixth inning. A leadoff walk, a Buster Posey one-out double, and a Yangervis Solarte one-out single gave San Francisco their two sixth inning runs. Posey went down to get a cutter diving out of the zone …

… and he hooked it into the corner. The ability to hit that pitch in an 0-2 count down the line for extra bases is why Posey’s (possibly) going to the Hall of Fame. The Solarte single? That was a mistake out over the plate. Paxton’s 106th and final pitch might’ve been his worst, and I reckon the Yankees would not have let him throw that many pitches if there weren’t two off-days before his next start. He’s going to get plenty of rest now.

Between the tough first inning and tough partial sixth inning Paxton retired 13 of 14 batters with seven strikeouts. Four of those 14 batters hit the ball out of the infield. To me, this seemed like a classic “he needed some time to settle in early and ran out of gas late” start. Paxton’s final line: 5.2 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 8 K. Not great, obviously, but also not all that bad either. When that qualifies as a down start, you’re doing a-okay.

The Super Good Enough Bullpen
Unlike Thursday night, the Yankees were leading when their bullpen got involved Friday, so Aaron Boone elected to use his good relievers. Hooray. Tommy Kahnle inherited a runner on first with two outs from Paxton and struck out Brandon Crawford to end the inning. Remember when he gave up two runs in two-thirds of an inning in Houston? Kahnle’s retired 28 of 33 batters with 13 strikeouts in his other ten appearances. That’ll work, Tommy Tightpants.

Zack Britton was on his way to an easy seventh inning before completely losing the plate with two outs. He got Pablo Sandoval to ground out and struck out Steven Duggar, and got ahead in the count 0-2 on Kevin Pillar. Everything was going swell … then eleven straight balls and three straight walks overall. Britton’s pitch locations:

Seems bad. Britton walked the bases loaded after two quick outs and an 0-2 count on Pillar. Adam Ottavino had to bail him out. Ottavino caught Posey looking at a slider strike three. Exhale. Britton has walked seven batters in eleven innings this season with a 14.9% walk rate. It’s still early and this outing certainly skewed his numbers, but also maybe throw strikes? Could be cool. Hopefully Britton gets reacquainted with the strike zone soon.

Anyway, Ottavino walked a batter of his own in an otherwise spotless eighth inning — to be fair, it appeared Solarte went around on the 3-1 pitch, but home plate umpire Ramon De Jesus never bothered ask third base umpire Mark Wegner for help — and Aroldis Chapman pitched around a one-out walk in the ninth. Would be cool to go one night without the bullpen walking three or four batters. Voit was kind enough to provide two insurance runs with a homer to dead center field against Mark Melancon in the ninth.

Leftovers
The 1-2-3-4 hitters: 10-for-18 (.556) with four doubles, one homer, one walk, one strikeout, six runs scored, and five runs driven in. Everyone else: 5-for-20 (.250) with no extra-base hits, no walks, and six strikeouts. The top of the order carried the Yankees in this game and hey, that’s perfectly fine. That’s why they’re atop the lineup. Nothing wrong with counting on your best players to be your best players.

Voit extended his MLB leading on-base streak to 37 games. It is the longest by a Yankee since Mark Teixeira had a 42-gamer in 2010. Voit went in 3-for-4 with a double and a homer in this game and is 11-for-27 (.407) with a .483 OBP and four homers in six games since Aaron Judge got hurt. Dude has stepped up huge lately. He’s hitting .276/.388/.551 (150 wRC+) on the year overall. Pretty awesome.

Estrada’s first career game in left field — first career game in left as a professional, majors or minors — went well. He had one fly ball hit his way and it was a routine catch, so yes, he survived. Wade pinch-ran for Estrada following his run-scoring single in the sixth. Wade’s not the most proficient outfielder himself, but he’s certainly more experienced than Thairo, so the Yankees put him in late for defense.

And finally, the Giants played a tribute video for CC Sabathia in the middle innings. Here’s (part of) the video. Sabathia grew up a little north of San Francisco in Vallejo. Neat gesture. The Giants are the first team to recognize Sabathia during his farewell season (to be fair, this is only the fourth road series).

Box Score, WPA Graph & Leftovers
MLB.com has the box score and video highlights, ESPN has the updated standings, and we have a Bullpen Workload page. Here’s the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
The penultimate game of the RAB era. The Yankees and Giants continue this three-game series with the middle game Saturday afternoon. That is a 4:05pm ET start. Veteran lefties J.A. Happ and Derek Holland will be on the mound.

For the first time in nearly two weeks, the Yankees looked very much like a team of injury replacements Thursday night. A seemingly comfortable 4-0 lead quickly vanished in the middle innings and turned into an 11-5 loss. The winning streak was going to end eventually. Seeing it end like that smarts.

Building A Four-Run Lead
The Yankees really worked Trevor Cahill hard Thursday. Ninety-three pitches in four innings plus three batters, and by my unofficial count, he threw 70 of those 93 pitches with a runner on base. The Yankees had Cahill working from the stretch all night. His final line: 4 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 4 BB, 2 K, 1 HR. They scored four runs against Cahill in four very different ways.

The First Run: Speed Kills. Tyler Wade created his team’s first run with his legs. He beat out an infield single to start the third inning, bringing DJ LeMahieu up to the plate. Wade stole second on the first pitch, stole third on the second pitch, and scored on LeMahieu’s single back up the middle on the third pitch. Efficient! Between his final at-bat Wednesday night and his first at-bat Thursday night, that was a hell-raising two-at-bat stretch for Wade.

The Second Run: The Long Ball. Not a whole lot to say about this one. Cahill hung a curveball to Gio Urshela and Urshela did not miss it. Solo home run to left field. First home run of the season and the ninth of his MLB career. Wade and Urshela gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead through four innings.

The Third Run: The Gift Run. Luke Voit and Brett Gardner opened the fifth inning with back-to-back singles, then Gary Sanchez worked a five-pitch walk to load the bases with no outs, ending Cahill’s night. Reliever Justin Anderson and catcher Jonathan Lucroy gifted the Yankees their third run when Anderson bounced a breaking ball and it snuck through Lucroy’s legs and went to the backstop. It was scored a wild pitch but looked more like a passed ball to me. Lucroy was squared up perfectly but still let it get through his legs. Whatever.

The Fourth Run: The Nice Piece of Hitting. The passed ball wild pitch scored a run and also moved the runners up to second and third with one out. Gleyber Torres battled Anderson for six pitches, then lined a two-strike single over the second baseman’s head to give the Yankees a 4-0. It was low enough that Sanchez had to freeze at second base to make sure it wasn’t caught, though I’m not sure he would’ve scored on that hit anyway. Love Gary, but he is not fleet of foot. Although he was not on the mound, the third and fourth runs were changed to Cahill.

The Wheels Come Off
This went from another very good Masahiro Tanaka start to tied at four real quick. Quick as in five batters. Tanaka retired eleven of the first 14 batters he faced, then, in the fifth inning, he went single, homer, ground out, single, homer. Just like that, the lead was gone. Lucroy poked a ground ball single up the middle, then Tommy La Stella ambushed an elevated fastball for a two-run homer. Luis Rengifo shot a ground ball single up the middle, then Kole Calhoun put a hanging splitter in the bleachers. Fell apart quick.

After retiring eleven of the first 14 batters he faced, six of the final eleven batters Tanaka faced reached base. In the sixth inning he walked Goodwin with one out and La Stella with two outs, ending his night. Tanaka has now walked three batters in three consecutive starts for the first time in his big league career. Those sixth inning walks eventually came around to score (more on that in a bit) though the homers were the problem. Tanaka let the bottom of the order beat him in that fifth inning.

Tanaka’s line: 5.2 IP, 6 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 2 HR on 89 pitches. One swing-and-miss, and it came on his 83rd pitch. The Angels have the lowest strikeout (16.1%) and swing-and-miss (7.4%) rates in baseball, and it showed. (The Angels are also a pretty good reminder that more contact doesn’t automatically equal better results. They went into the game 21st in runs per game and their non-Mike Trouts were hitting .229/.294/.378. But I digress.)

Death By Bullpen
I just do not understand why Jonathan Holder is consistently seeing such high-leverage situations. Two on with two outs in the sixth inning of a tie game? Get someone in there who can overpower the hitter and get an out without a ball being put in play. That is not Holder. The bullpen leverage leaderboard:

1. Aroldis Chapman: 1.75
2. Adam Ottavino: 1.54
3. Jonathan Holder: 1.43
4. Zack Britton: 1.19

Those are the right two guys at the top! But Holder third? Goodness. He replaced Tanaka and immediately got crossed up with Sanchez, allowing the runners to move to second and third. Holder then left a two-strike 92 mph fastball up in the zone to David Fletcher, and Fletcher pulled it through the left side for a two-run single and a 6-4 lead. Holder trying to throw a fastball by a hitter is adorable.

But wait! The bullpen weirdness didn’t end there. Stephen Tarpley was brought in to face the top of the lineup in the seventh inning. He walked the first two batters, then Joe Harvey put gas on the fire. Andrelton Simmons pulled a single to left to score one run and Urshela let Wade’s throw back to the infield get under his glove and scoot away, allowing the second run to score. Mike Tauchman misplayed a bloop single into a bases-clearing triple and that was all she wrote.

Holder allowed the two inherited runners to score in the sixth inning and Tarpley and Harvey conspired to allow five more runs in the seventh. Zack Britton, Tommy Kahnle, and Adam Ottavino did not pitch Tuesday or Wednesday, yet they were nowhere to be found in the sixth inning of a tie game (or the seventh inning down two). Good news though! Kahnle pitched with the Yankees down six in the eighth inning. Impossibly stupid. I have a headache now.

Leftovers
Two walks and a single loaded the bases against the extremely broken Cody Allen in the eighth inning. Had the 2-3-4 hitters up too. The Yankees weren’t going to get a better chance to make it ballgame than that. Voit struck out, Gardner drew a bases loaded walk to force in a run, and Sanchez flew out. Nine hits and seven walks. The Yankees had plenty of baserunners, but they went 3-for-15 (.200) with runners in scoring position. (Kinda weird it was ignored they hit .270/.372/.446 with runners in scoring position during 8-1 stretch.)

The Yankees ran wild on Lucroy all series. They stole five bases in this game — it was their first five-steal game since September 2013 — and nine in the series. In nine attempts too. Also, all things considered, the Yankees handled Trout well in the four games. He went 2-for-12 (.167) with seven walks and three strikeouts. Only scored two runs too, so the walks didn’t bite them. Many of them were of the unintentional intentional variety.

And finally, Voit’s MLB leading on-base streak is now up to 36 games. It is the longest by a Yankee since Derek Jeter also had a 36-gamer spanning 2012-13. The last Yankees with an on-base streak longer than Voit’s (and Jeter’s)? Mark Teixeira. He had a 42-game streak in 2010.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
For the box score and video highlights, head over to MLB.com. For the updated standings, go to ESPN. Here is our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the loss probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
Interleague play! Pitchers hitting! Routine baseball decisions people call strategy! The Yankees have a three-game series with the Giants next. It is their first trip to San Francisco since 2007 and only their second trip to San Francisco during interleague play. Huh. Didn’t realize that. James Paxton vs. Madison Bumgarner will be the pitching matchup Friday night. That is a 10:15pm ET start.

The Fighting Spirit has arrived in 2019. The gritty gutty Yankees erased a five-run deficit Wednesday night to earn their sixth straight win, and their eighth win in the last nine games. The final score was 6-5. Do we love this team yet? I can’t wait for Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge and Luis Severino and everyone else to come back and ruin it. (Kidding!)

Sabathia Labors
History will have to wait until Arizona next week. CC Sabathia not only failed to strike out the six batters needed to join the 3,000-hit club Wednesday, he got hit around for the first time this year. One unearned run in his first two starts and ten innings, then five runs (four earned) in five innings Wednesday night, including his first, second, and third home runs allowed. Andrelton Simmons got him twice and Kole Calhoun got him once.

The two Simmons home runs were on mistake pitches right out over the plate. Nothing really to analyze there. Bad pitches that got hit out. It happens. The three-run rally following the Simmons homer in the fourth inning featured some classic 2019 Yankees dumb though. Albert Pujols dunked a single to left, then Brian Goodwin dropped down a bunt right in front of the plate, and Gary Sanchez bobbled it. He had Pujols at second easily and it looked to me Sanchez rushed it to try to get the double play. Instead, no outs.

With runners at first and second with no outs, Jonathan Lucroy hit a hard chopper to second base that DJ LeMahieu couldn’t handle. It was a double play ball, but the ball got away from LeMahieu, and the Yankees were only able to get the force out at second base. The Yankees gave the Angels two free outs and two free baserunners in the inning and Calhoun made ’em pay with his three-run homer. Sabathia’s pitch locations:

Sabathia was over the plate way too much with his slider and he seemed to have trouble locating his cutter in on righties. It was either too far in for an easy take or not in enough and over the plate. He couldn’t find the sweet spot on the corner. Sabathia’s final line: 5 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 3 HR on 86 pitches. Three strikeouts next time out gets him into the 3,000-strikeout club. Shake it off, big man. See you in five days.

The Comeback Rally
For five innings this looked like one of those routine “the starter didn’t have it and the offense couldn’t get going” losses. The kinda loss that happens what, 40-something times a year? At least. Then the Yankees went and erased a five-run deficit. Tyler Wade beat out an infield single to start the sixth, then LeMahieu brought him home with a double to left. LeMahieu later scored on a passed ball to get the Yankees to within 5-2.

Angels reliever Luis Garcia helped the Yankees get back into the game in the seventh. Garcia was brought in to face the 6-7-8-9 hitters and he let all four reach base with only one ball being put in play. Let’s annotate the play-by-play:

(1) We’re still in the process of learning whether Mike Ford is #ActuallyGood, but this much is clear one week into his big league career: He is hella disciplined at the plate. That was the book on him in the minors and we’ve seen it these last few days. Ford doesn’t expand the zone and he’s not at all afraid to hit behind in the count. Garcia got ahead in the count 1-2 on Ford. Four pitches later, it was ball four, take your base. There’s the rally starter. Six walks in 26 big league plate appearances for Ford (23.1%).

(2) I Can’t Believe He’s Been This Good Gio Urshela poked a little two-strike single to center field, then Mighty Mike Tauchman followed Ford’s lead with a seven-pitch walk to load the bases. He got ahead in the count 3-0, took the 3-0 auto-strike, fouled away two well-placed down-and-away heaters, then spit on the first breaking ball of the at-bat for the walk. Tauchman quietly has eight walks in 53 plate appearances (15.1%). He has a history of double-digit walk rates in the minors and I feel like I should’ve known that. He’s a grinder in that batter’s box.

(3) I like Tyler Wade. I do. Probably too much. I really wish he’d hit though. Even a little bit. This was my message in the group chat with my buddies:

Fortunately, Luis Garcia really stinks (or at least he did on this night), and he walked Wade on four pitches to force in a run. That is unforgivable. Throwing strikes it hard, that’s something that isn’t said enough, but man, walking the career .169/.234/.240 (27 wRC+) hitter with the bases loaded on four pitches is brutal. Wade took the free pass and the Yankees cut the deficit to 5-3.

(4) LeMahieu is coming out of his funk. He went into this game in a 3-for-37 (.081) skid, but he ripped a hard-hit double (101.9 mph exit velocity) to left field in the sixth inning, then clobbered a sac fly to left field in the seventh inning (98.8 mph exit velocity) to get the Yankees to within 5-4. Solid contact, swung at the right pitches, etc. etc. Ken Singleton always says to watch the type of outs a hitter makes when he’s slumping. The hard-hit outs will tell you when he’s starting to come out of it. LeMahieu ripped some liners into gloves the last few days. Now they’re finding grass or going from productive outs.

(5) The contact play … worked? The contact play worked! That’s for all you folks who say the contact play never works. Luke Voit hit a little chopper to Simmons at shortstop, the throw short-hopped in front of the plate, and the speedy Tauchman was able to slide in behind the tag to tie the game 5-5. The Angels were very willing to let the Yankees back into the game that inning. Garcia walked the Nos. 6, 7, and 9 hitters and Simmons couldn’t make a good throw to the plate to get Tauchman.

(6) Stupid sexy Mike Trout. He reached out to make a marvelous running catch at full speed in center field to rob Brett Gardner of extra bases …

… and start what turned out to be an inning-ending double play. Simmons put a tag on Wade at second base, he took his foot off the bag for an instant, and that’s an out. The obligatory screen grab:

I hate those ticky tack replays so much. The Yankees do it all the time and benefit from those replays as much as any team — this is my go-to example for the sheer ridiculousness of these plays — but I still hate it. That ain’t the spirit of instant replay. I also don’t have a good solution, and the rule is the rule right now, so it is what it is. Wade was off the base for an instant, Simmons had the tag applied for that instant, so inning over. I’m not sure I would call that the hidden ball trick, but close enough. Why Wade was at second base rather than tagging up and advancing to third on that play, I’ll never know. Game tied, rally over.

To Wade’s credit, he atoned for his seventh inning baserunning blunder in the ninth inning. He pulled a two-out ground ball single through the right side and immediately stole second base. Jonathan Lucroy bobbled the ball a bit and didn’t even make the throw, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Wade had that bag stolen. With two outs and two strikes, the no-longer-slumping LeMahieu inside-outed a single to right field to drive in Wade and give the Yankees a 6-5 lead. Two hits, a walks, and stolen base … and one bad mistake on the bases. It evens out.

Leftovers
Shoutout to Jonathan Loaisiga. He replaced Sabathia and tossed three scoreless innings, giving the offense a chance to get back in the game. Huge. With Chad Green in Scranton for the time being, I am very interested in seeing Loaisiga in a multi-inning relief role. He could really come in handy in that role, just like he did in this game. Aroldis Chapman pitched around a one-out walk in the ninth. The game ended with Trout on deck for the second straight night.

Rough return for Sanchez. Four at-bats, four strikeouts (on 14 pitches), plus an error. Ouch. Two hits for Wade, two hits for LeMahieu, and one hit apiece for Voit, Torres, and Urshela. Voit, Ford, Tauchman, and Wade drew walks. Not a ton of baserunners, but the Yankees really clustered them together. At one spanning the sixth and seventh innings, seven of ten Yankees to bat reached base.

And finally, Voit’s on-base streak is up to 35 games. Longest by a Yankee since Derek Jeter had a 36-gamer spanning 2012-13. Voit’s sitting on a .236/.358/.494 (128 wRC+) batting line at the moment. He’s been hitting well for two weeks now and I feel like his batting line hasn’t budged. Hmmm.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
MLB.com has the box score and video highlights and ESPN has the updated standings. Here is our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
The Yankees and Angels wrap up this four-game series Thursday night. That’s a 9:07pm ET start (?) on the getaway day. Masahiro Tanaka and noted pinch-hitter Trevor Cahill are the scheduled starters.

This game should not have been as close as it was, but sometimes things don’t according to plan, and they didn’t Tuesday night. The Yankees survived a near bullpen collapse to pick up their fifth straight win and seventh win in their last eight games. Remember when Anaheim was a house of horrors? The Yankees have won nine of their last dozen games in LAnaheim. Tuesday’s final score was 7-5.

Two Early Runs
For the fifth time in the last six games, the Yankees banked a first inning run Tuesday night. Luke Voit did the honors with a solo home run to dead center field. Second straight night he started the game with a first inning dinger. With so many important players on the injured list, Voit is far and away the biggest power threat in the lineup right now, and he’s giving the Yankees what they need.

The Yankees cashed in their second run in the second inning. Mike Ford singled to right, Mike Tauchman worked a walk, and Thairo Estrada shot a single to right to load the bases with one out. First career knock for Estrada. After all those years of prospect watching, The Summer of Thairo has finally arrived. Tyler Wade brought a run home with a chopper to short that turned into a force out at second.

Two things about the Wade fielder’s choice. One, defensive wiz Andrelton Simmons had to come in on the ball slightly, and it sure looked like he had time to go home for the force out, especially with the not-so-speedy Ford running. Here’s the (approximate) moment Simmons received the ball:

Yeah, I think Simmons could’ve gone home there and cut the run down. Force play, so no need to worry about the tag, and Ford’s not a burner coming in from third base. Well, whatever. Simmons instead went to second base and tried to start the inning-ending 6-4-3 double play.

And two, Tommy La Stella bobbled the transfer at second and didn’t even attempt the throw to first. Without that, there was a decent chance to complete the double play and get Wade at first base, even with his speed. I hesitate to call Simmons not going home a mistake — he is the best defensive player in baseball and one of the best in history, so I’ll defer to his judgement — but it was a break for the Yankees. They got two breaks on that play counting La Stella’s bobble.

After Brett Gardner’s one-out triple in the third inning went to waste — Gleyber Torres struck out and Ford popped out — I was starting to get those “they’re going to regret not tacking on runs” feelings. It was the third inning! And Chris Stratton was not exactly shutting the Yankees down! What in the world is wrong with me. Anyway, Ford added two insurance runs with his first career dinger in the fifth inning.

That had to feel special. I mean, the first homer always feels special, but I bet it was extra special for Ford. He’s a local kid who grew up a Yankees fan in New Jersey and he spent a long time in the minors after signing as an undrafted free agent in 2013. Ford’s journey to the show was not conventional. He had to earn his way up and even then he still needed some help (injuries) to get an opportunity. Now he has a big league homer to his name. Pretty rad.

Sunday Stroll
There is no doubt the Yankees miss their injured players, including staff ace Luis Severino, but you know what? Four starts (and one relief appearance) into his stint as Severino’s replacement, Domingo German has Luis Severino numbers: 1.75 ERA (2.87 FIP) with 28 strikeouts (28.3%) and eight walks (8.1%) in 25.2 innings. Better than Severino numbers, really. Remember when German walked five batters in five innings in his first start? He’s walked three batters in 20.2 innings since.

Only twice in six innings did the Angels really threaten against German. They started the third inning with back-to-back singles, the second of which did not leave the infield and couldn’t have traveled more than 20 feet from home plate. German rebounded to strike out Kole Calhoun and get Mike Trout to bang into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play. I, uh, did not see that last part coming. (Trout was called out after replay overturned the safe call.)

A double and an error — German rushed the tag on a chopper up the first base line and flubbed the play — put runners on the corners with one out in the fifth inning. David Fletcher hit a grounder to short, too slow to even attempt the 6-4-3 double play, so the run scored. Just the one run though. German limited the damage. His final line: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K on 99 pitches. Check out his pitch usage Tuesday night:

• Four-seamer: 29 (three swings and misses)
• Two-seamer: 19 (zero swings and misses)
• Curveball: 29 (four swings and misses)
• Changeup: 22 (two swings and misses)

German threw the kitchen sink at the Angels. Four pitches used regularly. The kitchen sink, but with two mid-90s fastballs and a very high spin breaking ball. Nine swings and misses is on the low side for German but he made up for it with soft contact. This was the 25th time he faced at least ten batters in a game and his 86.5 mph average exit velocity allowed was his six lowest. Pretty cool.

Yes, it’s still very early in season, and no, German has not faced great competition (Tigers, Orioles, White Sox, Royals, Angels), but he looks so better right now than he did at any point last year. More confident, less deer-in-the-headlights-y, more like he knows he belongs. German’s stuff has always been so good. Now it seems like everything else is starting to come together. He’s been awesome.

Unnecessarily Interesting
The Yankees kept tacking on runs following Ford’s home run and it’s a good thing they did. Voit walked and Gardner doubled to start the seventh, then Torres singled in a run and Austin Romine brought in another run with a ground out. Voit socked his second home run of the game in the eighth inning, that one an opposite field shot into the right field bleachers. Two solo homers on the night and three in the series. That’ll work.

With German cruising and a nice 7-1 lead, it seemed like the Yankees were heading for a nice easy win. Then Chad Green went and 2019 Chad Greened all over the place. After getting the final out in the seventh, Green loaded the bases with no outs in the eighth. Two singles and a walk. Granted, the singles were well-placed more than well-struck, plus Trout drew the walk and he’s pretty awesome, but still. Even with a 7-1 lead, things got messy.

The good: Green got ahead in the count 1-2 on Justin Bour. Threw three fastballs by him up in the zone, one for a swing-and-miss and the other two for very late foul balls. Clearly, Bour was having trouble catching up to the heat. So what did Green and Romine do? They tried to finish Bour with a splitter. Green threw this 87.3 mph piece of junk …

… and Bour parked it about a third of the way up the right-center bleachers for a grand slam. Bad pitch selection and worse execution. Green has allowed 14 runs and four homers in 7.2 innings this year. During his breakout 2017 season, he allowed 14 runs and four homers in 69 innings. (Last year it was 22 runs and nine homers in 75.2 innings.) My quick late night math has Green with a .395/.465/.763 opponent’s batting line. Yeesh.

Short bullpen or no short bullpen, I have no problem whatsoever with bringing Green into a game with a six-run lead. The Yankees have to get him right and that is a “try to get a reliever right” situation. Clearly though, Green is not right, and he hasn’t been at any point this season. My guess is he winds up on the injured list rather than being sent to Triple-A Scranton. I just don’t see any way a healthy Green is this bad. Injured list is my guess. We’ll see.

Anyway, once the game became unnecessarily interesting, Luis Cessa entered and immediately put the tying run on base. Cool. A strikeout and a double play later, the eighth inning was over. Ex-friggin-hale. Zack Britton needed all of seven pitches to get three routine ground balls to close things out in the ninth. The real save situation came when Cessa had two men on base with no outs in the eighth, but I digress. Closers are for closin’.

Leftovers
Whale of a game for the makeshift 2-3-4-5 hitters: 10-for-17 (.588) with a double, a triple, two homers, seven runs scored, and five runs driven in. Gardner had four hits and was a homer short of the cycle — he is 7-for-10 in two games as the No. 3 hitter — plus Voit (two homers), Torres (two singles), and Ford (single, homer) had two hits each. The struggling DJ LeMahieu went 0-for-6 and saw his season batting line drop from .293/.353/.413 (105 wRC+) to .272/.330/.383 (91 wRC+) in one night. Officially a below-average hitter.

And finally, Voit’s on-base streak is up to 34 games, longest by a Yankee since Derek Jeter’s 36-gamer spanning 2012-13. Voit has a ways to go to get to threaten the franchise record though. Joe DiMaggio had a 74-game on-base streak in 1941, which of course included his record 56-game hitting streak.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Go to MLB.com for the box score and video highlights and ESPN for the updated standings. Here’s our Bullpen Workload page and here’s the win probability graph:

Source: FanGraphs

Up Next
The Yankees and Angels are halfway through this four-game series. Lefty CC Sabathia and righty Felix Pena are the scheduled starters for Wednesday night’s game. That’s another 10:07pm ET start. Four more 10pm-ish starts to go on this road trip, including Wednesday.