The Yankees had already locked up their third-straight series win, but were unable to notch their third consecutive sweep on Sunday in Houston. Astros hitters had a perfect gameplan to attack starter Luis Gil — although they may not have needed one — and the Yankee lineup was unable to counter against Spencer Arrighetti. Even after some signs of life in the ninth, the Astros salvaged one game in this set, 7-4.
Plainly put, Luis Gil was terrible. The Yankee righty lasted a couple of batters into the
fifth inning, but never looked good. I wrote in the game thread that he was issuing nearly a walk per strikeout, and he actually got worse today, with three free passes and not a single punchout. He has now walked 11 of 85 batters faced this season, against just nine strikeouts. This is not the performance of a Major League-caliber starting pitcher.
Things were bad from the jump, with Christian Walker taking Gil deep for a two-run shot just four batters into the game. I may be a humble blogger, but I don’t think you’re supposed to pitch there:
Don’t worry though, the second home run he allowed on the day, another two-run blast this time off of Isaac Paredes’ bat in the third inning, was a slightly-less-terrible pitch:
The Yankees were down 4-0 before they’d barely gotten through their own batting order once. I’m not going to excuse the Yankee offense today, who outside of one Aaron Judge blast was fast asleep against a pitcher that left a lot of balls out over the zone. Still, as we had seen in the two previous games of this series, when you’re down by crooked numbers early it does impact the way your hitters approach their at-bats. Not much went right at all at Daiken Field today but being down by so much so early had the biggest impact.
Gil allowed Carlos Correa to walk to open the fifth before Yordan Alvarez doubled, and I think we’re all lucky that Darth Vader Yordan didn’t manage to leave the yard in this series for how hard the ball was coming off his bat. Still, the Astros had two men in scoring position with nobody out, and Paul Blackburn was called in to a pretty impossible situation.
He didn’t help himself out though, allowing three more runners to score and finally closing the book on Gil’s day. 4.0+ IP, 6 ER, 3 BB, 0 K. His ERA this season is now 6.05, his FIP 8.43, and his xFIP which assumes a relatively normal HR rate, stands at 6.32. The Yankees are a good baseball team, but Gil in his current form cannot be allowed to make another start in this rotation.
There’s not much else to talk about in this game. Jazz Chisholm Jr. had a horrendous challenge and slid down to 1-for-8 on the year, the current worst mark in all of baseball. He did manage a single out of the AB in question, but I think we need to start increasing the alleged $1000 kangaroo court fines for challenges missed that badly.
Jazz slightly made up for the ABS snafu with a really nice double play:
As I said earlier, Judge did manage to push a run across all by himself, after being held hitless throughout the series:
That’s his 10th home run this season, and the third time in his career he’s gone yard on his birthday. Happy 34th, Cap.
There was something resembling a rally in the ninth, albeit everything coming with two outs. Paul Goldschmidt boomed a double into the left-center gap that brought Jazz around to score, and J.C. Escarra answered with a double of his own to make it 7-3. Ryan McMahon, who is starting to look like a representative MLB hitter again, added an RBI single of his own before José Caballero lined out to end the threat.
There are going to be bad games — there’s that old adage about how every team wins 50, loses 50, and it’s what you do with the rest that counts. More particular to these 2026 Yankees, it’s easier to stomach a loss like this when it comes at the end of an 8-1 run with series wins over bitter rivals on the road. Still, there are takeaways from everything; Luis Gil cannot continue to be a starter for this ballclub, and we might want to look at why Judge’s road splits are so off.
The Yankees can wash the taste out of their mouths right away, as they head up to Arlington for a three-game set with the Rangers. Before what should be a dynamite pitching matchup Tuesday, where Jacob DeGrom is scheduled to start against Cam Schlittler, the nominal No. 1 in the rotation goes Monday night with Max Fried tabbed to start. That’s as good as you can hope for coming off a loss, and first pitch comes at 8:05 p.m. Eastern.
