All the good feelings from Tuesday’s big trade with the White Sox were wiped away within two innings Wednesday afternoon. The 2017 Yankees do not mess around. The Yankees dropped Wednesday’s series finale 6-1 to the Twins. They are now 0-8-2 in their last ten series and 10-22 in their last 32 games. The Yankees have been playing at a 51-win pace for the last 20% of the season.
All With Two Outs
Jordan Montgomery’s rough July continues. He was able to complete five innings Wednesday afternoon — he hadn’t done that in either of his previous two starts — though the Yankees were staring at a 6-0 deficit before Montgomery recorded his sixth out. All six runs scored with two outs in the second inning too. At one point he allowed three straight hitters to reach in two-strike counts. Blah.
Rookie Zack Granite, who came into the game 2-for-22 (.091) in seven MLB games, got the scoring started with a two-run single to center. That was disappointing for a few reasons. One, Granite was 2-for-22! Two, Granite was the No. 9 hitter. Three, Montgomery had the left-on-left platoon advantage. And four, Montgomery was on the verge of escaping the jam after getting a big shallow fly out with runners on second and third from the previous batter.
As disappointing as the Granite two-run single was, if Montgomery could keep it at two runs, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. He couldn’t do that though. The next three batters all reached base, all in two-strike counts. Brian Dozier walked, Eduardo Escobar drove in another run with a single, then Miguel Sano clobbered a hanging curveball …
… in an 0-2 count for a three-run home run. That escalated quickly. Impressively bad location on that pitch to Sano. Hang a curveball there and he’ll hit it a mile. Stop the bleeding at two runs? Fine. Three runs? Argh, whatever. Three-run bomb in an 0-2 count and two outs? *throws hands up and walks away*
I guess the good news is Montgomery did settle down a bit after the six-run second inning and was able to chew up some innings to spare the bullpen. He retired 13 of the final 14 batters he faced after the Sano home run. His final line: 6 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. Montgomery has now allowed 14 runs in 19.2 innings in four July starts. Hopefully it’s just a little rookie wall and he snaps out of it soon. The Yankees sure need him to.
Operation Shutdown
The Yankees had their best chance to score against Jose Berrios in the second inning, when Didi Gregorius (walk) and Clint Frazier (walk) reached with one out, and Austin Romine (walk) with two outs to load the bases. The Romine at-bat was really good. He was down in the count 0-2, but battled back to get ball four. Alas, everyday player Ronald Torreyes grounded out to end the threat.
Once the Twins put up six runs in the second, we saw more than a few “it’s a getaway day so let’s get this over quick” at-bats. Berrios threw 49 total pitches from the third through sixth innings, and gave up only three baserunners in the process. One of those three baserunners was an infield single. Another was a hit-by-pitch. It wasn’t until Brett Gardner’s two-out single in the seventh that the Yankees finally got on the board. By then it was too little, too late.
Jacoby Ellsbury struck out with runners on second and third to end that seventh inning, which was New York’s last best chance to make it a ballgame. With Wednesday’s one-run effort, the Yankees have now scored 20 runs in 85 offensive innings since the All-Star break. That’s 2.12 runs per nine innings. If the offense were a pitching staff, they’d be great.
Leftovers
Welcome to the Yankees, Todd Frazier. He made his debut with the team as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning — his flight from Chicago was delayed and he didn’t get to the ballpark until after the game started — and struck out against Berrios. Clearly the trade is a failure. Frazier remained in the game at third base and was not tested defensively. He did take a pitch to the hand in the ninth inning, but remained in the game.
Welcome back to the Yankees, Tommy Kahnle. Well, I guess it’s not really welcome back since he never actually played for the Yankees, right? He only played in their farm system. Whatever. Kahnle struck out two a perfect eighth and ran his fastball up to 100 mph. Even though they got in late, I’m glad Frazier and Kahnle played. Get those “first game as a Yankee” jitters out of the way.
Two hits for Gardner, two hits for Frazier, two hits for Starlin Castro, and one hit for the rest of the Yankees. That was a Gregorius single in the eighth inning. Gregorius and Romine drew the only walks. I miss offense. Perhaps getting all the regulars in the lineup on the same day at some point would help.
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
Head on over to ESPN for the box score and updated standings, and MLB.com for the video highlights. Here’s our handy dandy Bullpen Workload page and here’s the loss probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
The Yankees are done in Minnesota and are now heading west for a four-game series in Seattle. It’ll be Luis Severino against Felix Hernandez in Thursday night’s series opener/passing of the torch.
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