I finished a book earlier this week, Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel, which centers around the question “what is all this violence in service of?” What is the actual value of senseless violence visited on people overseas, violence that is inevitably brought back to American shores?
The stakes of Major League Baseball are much lower, but what is all this inertia in service of? What is the sloppy baseball, the deference to a shortstop who always goes 0-for-4, a manager who can’t seem to push any correct
buttons, going toward? The team has not occupied first place in nearly two months, and indeed they fell even further behind the second-place Red Sox in the Wild Card standings after today’s 12-1 loss, the third in a row in this series and eighth consecutive on the season against Boston. This is neither a good, sound, or lucky baseball team, so why are we doing all of this?
Will Warren finally hit a stumbling block, or maybe just ran headlong into a wall. After a month of being the Yankees’ best starter, the rookie righty went just four innings, with the same number of walks as strikeouts.
Warren didn’t get as much help as he should have though, with two men on in the third Austin Wells let a popup fall to the ground that would have retired Alex Bregman if caught. Bregman walked and Trevor Story knocked a double to plate a couple of runs — Story would tag Warren for a solo home run as the final batter the Yankee starter faced in the fifth.
Boston played a good bit of baseball in the fourth too, loading the bases and hitting two sacrifice flies where all runners tagged and advanced. That plated two more runs but perhaps just as importantly, kept a runner at third base. Every 90 feet matters, and while Boston may not be the best team in baseball, those little edges and margins add up, and it seems like the Yankees are never able to match those margins.
This would be mirrored in the eighth, when David Hamilton went straight through second to third on a ball to right field, correctly betting the Yankees couldn’t make the play to toss him out. Sure enough, Giancarlo Stanton’s throw was wide of the bag, and Hamilton had a triple.
On the other side of the ball, at least Stanton provided the only real offensive highlight:
Part of that ineptitude was that Garrett Crochet was on one, throwing seven stellar innings, with 11 strikeouts against a single walk. Perhaps we should file for some sort of injunction against Boston trading for White Sox starters…
Crochet was excellent, but the Yankees haven’t been crisp in their at bats either. Anthony Volpe decided to bunt in the fourth down by three runs, an easy out for the Sox starter. New York’s hitters were constantly down 1-2 in counts. Their best, last chance to score came in the eighth, where Aaron Judge doubled and Cody Bellinger singled to put runners at the corners. Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. struck out in sequence, failing to get the ball in play and shave down the deficit at all.
After missing out, the Red Sox poured it on in the top of the ninth, as Paul Blackburn was hung out to dry. Seven men came in to score, one of them on a Volpe throwing error that sailed high and away from Ben Rice.
Another run was via Blackburn’s own balk. The right-hander ended up throwing 70 pitches in what is likely his only appearance for the Yankees, with both Fernando Cruz and Ryan Yarbrough set to rejoin the team this week. Carlos Narváez had the coup de grâce with a two-run home run that pushed the lead to 11.
It was an embarrassing day for the New York Yankees, and it sealed an embarrassing weekend. The best they can hope for is to scavenge one win in this series tomorrow night on Sunday Night Baseball, or else suffer an excruciating sweep. Carlos Rodón draws that assignment against former Dodgers righty Dustin May, with a 7:10pm Eastern start time on ESPN.
