The Yankees had to put together a strong team effort after last night's farcical 13-12 loss to the Marlins in Miami. They had to come out the gate with strong fundamentals, good at-bats, and purposeful pitching. While Cam Schlittler put together a solid start and the bullpen rebounded from their Friday night breakdown, the Bombers completely flunked the former two categories. Two early blunders by the Yanks—one from a base coach and one from a base runner—set the tone for a two-hit shutout loss in which
the lineup went entirely AWOL against the impressive Eury Pérez and the Marlins bullpen.
The clown music fired up right away in the first half-inning, when Luis Rojas gave one of the worst sends I have ever seen on this 111-mph single to left from Giancarlo Stanton.
Kyle Stowers could have lobbed this ball underhand and Trent Grisham would still have been dead meat. Grisham was about ten feet from rounding third when Stowers—who has a cannon arm—picked up the ball. Rojas had the whole play develop in front of his eyes and didn't throw up the most obvious stop sign imaginable. Like most other Yankee bloopers in recent weeks, it defies explanation.
The Marlins didn't need to polish up on baserunning to take the early lead in this one, as Agustín Ramírez greeted Cam Schlittler with a solo home run to open the scoring in the first. Schlittler had struck out the first two batters—and would strike out the next following the homer—but the former Yankee prospect took his only mistake of the inning out of the yard.
The Yankees continued to play like a junior varsity team when Jazz Chisholm Jr. took a vacation from first base and got doubled up on an infield fly in the second inning. There are no words. What was he doing? Why did he wander a country mile off of first? Did he think the ball was going to drop? Why was Travis Chapman twiddling his thumbs in the coach's box and not screaming at Jazz to get back to the bag?
The Marlins at least gave one back when rookie Jacob Marsee got himself thrown out trying to steal third with two outs, but that kind of gaffe was wholly defensible in comparison to the Yankees’ mistakes these last two games. It bears repeating that these are the kinds of bad plays which allowed the Dodgers to laugh their way to the Commissioner’s Trophy last October. They haven’t gone anywhere in 2025.
It's particularly inadvisable to give away free outs to a pitcher as nasty as Eury Pérez. The 22-year old rising star retired nine consecutive hitters after walking Chisholm, who of course retired himself shortly after reaching base. A double from Ben Rice broke the streak, but Pérez expertly worked around the rally to strand a pair and complete the fifth. He then came back out and retired the side in order to finish six scoreless innings.
For his part, Schlittler performed admirably in a five-and-dive start, striking out six as opposed to just two walks. But Ramírez stung him a second time before he headed for the showers. Those two solo shots from Miami's DH comprised the only scoring all game.
Jake Bird rebounded from his disastrous Yankee debut with a 1-2-3 sixth inning, and Luke Weaver and Tim Hill followed with scoreless frames of their own to keep the Marlins within striking distance for the offense. But the lineup, which plated a dozen runs last night, were wholly incapable of striking. Give-up at bat after give-up at bat stacked on top of one another until they only had three outs left to burn.
Right-hander Calvin Faucher faced the top of the Yankee order in the ninth. He got Grisham to ground to second base on two pitches, struck out Jasson Domínguez in one of the precious few competitive plate appearances of the night, then got Cody Bellinger to roll over softly to first. The Yankees showed no fight after a horrible loss last night, which only served to make that defeat sting even worse.
In all, the Yankees finished with two hits: the Stanton single in the first which immediately led to an out at home, and Rice's fifth-inning double. After a walk to Paul Goldschmidt which followed Rice's double, all 14 subsequent Yankee hitters were sent to the dugout. That adds up to 23 of 25 sent down following Jazz's walk—and subsequent misadventure off first base.
You can't help but think about those two mistakes and especially the blown send in the first inning: if Rojas holds Grisham at third base as was his job, the Yankees are set up with a great chance to score some runs and run up Pérez's pitch count early. Instead, the Yankees wasted the opportunity and would not get a better one all day. Will there be any accountability for these two awful losses, so different in their shape and yet equally damning of the team's perpetually poor fundamentals? Only time will tell. (By the way, Toronto defeated Kansas City this afternoon, so the Yankees lost a whole game in the divisional race to top it all off.)
The Yanks play one more game in this cursed ballpark and then we'll see it again in 2027. ...Maybe. Anyway, tomorrow afternoon, Luis Gil will make his long-anticipated season debut. He's expected to go about 80 pitches deep in his first start off the IL—he'll be opposed by Edward Cabrera, who's having a great season. Note the start time: 1:40 PM EST, with coverage on YES.
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