One takeway from Sunday afternoon is that the Yankees better hope Luis Gil can figure it out quickly. Because today, he couldn’t hit the strike zone. And when he did, the Marlins made him pay. Considering how long it’s been since he was on a big league mound, his struggles today make sense.
But with no Gerrit Cole and no Clarke Schmidt, New York desperately needs last season’s Rookie of the Year to figure it out. Before we hang Sunday’s loss on Gil, however, let’s also take a moment to remember the offense.
The bats, apparently deciding that if 12 runs isn’t enough to win a game after Friday’s debacle, were missing in action until it was probably too late.
And of course the bullpen. After the new guys imploded Friday, the old hands took their turn at letting Marlins smack them around. It’s not what you want. After taking three of four from Tampa, there was reason to think maybe this unbelievably frustrating team was turning a corner. I fell for it again. At this point, I’m not even angry. Heck, I’m not even surprised; just numbly annoyed. Final score on Sunday: 7-3, Miami. It was the Marlins’ first-ever sweep of the Yankees, and the closest thing to that last happened in the doomed 2003 World Series, when New York dropped three in a row to the Fish to lose the Fall Classic.
The Marlins shut the Yankees out the night before, 2-0. Trent Grisham took that personally. After falling behind 0-2 to Edward Cabrera leading off the game, Grish stepped out of the box to slow the at-bat down. PitchCom problems delayed things further and finally, on a 2-2 count, Grisham took Cabrera yard to dead center field. That 412-foot bomb, his 20th homer of the season, gave the Yanks the early 1-0 lead.
In the bottom half, Gil took the mound in a meaningful game for the first time since last season’s World Series. A hit and a walk put some traffic on the bases and extended his pitch count (24) but ultimately Gil put a zero in the run column while shaking off some game rust.
Scoreless first inning notwithstanding, Gil clearly did not have his best command. Three of the first eight hitters to face him reached via walks, including two in the second inning. And as so often happens, walks came back to haunt you. Later in the second, Gil left a cement-mixer of a slider in the middle of the plate to Troy Johnston, who drilled it into the right field corner.
Good defense kept more than one run from scoring. But the lead was gone and Gil looked awful. A single scored a second Marlins run, leaving runners on the corners and prompting a mound visit from pitching coach Matt Blake. All-Star Kyle Stowers followed with a sacrifice fly to give the Marlins a 3-1 lead.
Meanwhile, Cabrera retired eight in a row after the Grisham home run. Trent was the next Yankee to reach base, via a walk in the third. And though Ben Rice put a charge into a ball (379 feet), it was to the wrong part of the ballpark. Instead of a two-run, game-tying dinger, it was a pretty routine out on the warning track.
By the way, if you feel like Rice has hit the ball extremely hard all season, seemingly to no avail, you’re not wrong. His hard-hit metrics are all in the 90th+ percentile, but he entered today with a .249 BABIP.
Gil bounced back in the third inning. He did allow a single but whiffed two Marlins and got back into the dugout in relatively short order, especially compared to the previous inning.
The fourth ended Gil’s day, however. Another walk, followed by a one-out single, put two runners on. With Gil’s pitch count at 77, manager Aaron Boone made the walk to the mound. All the Yankees and Yankee fans can hope is that it’s all uphill from here for Gil, who struggled mightily today.
Brent Headrick “relieved” Gil and promptly gave up a three-run shot to Stowers. On an 0-2 pitch that had absolutely no business being anywhere near the strike zone. Ye gods. As my editor, Andrew, put it in our Slack channel, this series has been a “bucket of cold water on the fun” that was the trade deadline. Anyway. 6-1 Marlins.
To Headrick’s credit, he did give the Yankees length. Clean fifth and sixth innings minimized the chances Boone would need to burn through the entire worn bullpen after a short outing from Gil.
The old “bloop and a blast” paid off for the Yankees in the top of the seventh. If you had an infield single from Giancarlo Stanton on your bingo card today, well done. His leadoff hit put a man on for the struggling Jazz Chisholm Jr.. Facing lefty Josh Simpson, Chisholm got his pitch and didn’t miss it. His two-run bomb put some life back in the Yankees and narrowed the deficit to 6-3.
With the deficit in striking distance and a plethora of new bullpen arms, Boone went to JT Brubaker. And that turned out precisely how you’d expect. Brubaker was one pitch from escaping the inning with a man on second. But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. A Jakob Marsee triple made the game 7-3.
The Yankees never really threatened from there. Losing the series would have been one thing. Getting swept out of Miami is another. It was an awful look for a scuffling team that can’t seem to get out of its own way. “This was not a good weekend.” Well said, Michael Kay.
Join us tomorrow night as the Yankees kick off a series against the Wild Card-contending Rangers, who could potentially push the Yanks out of a playoff spot entirely with a dusting of their own. Ace Max Fried, hunting his 13th win of the season, faces Patrick Corbin. First pitch is at 8:05pm ET Eastern.
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