The start of the game was delayed a little over three hours, but it didn’t seem to affect either the Yankees’ bats or arms. With a chance to sweep the Royals, the club did just that, flattening their onetime bitter rivals behind Ryan Weathers’ strong start and a big first inning for the lineup. The Yankees move to 13-9 with a dominant 7-0 victory on Sunday.
We got right to it once play was allowed, with leadoff hitter Ben Rice doing his job and walking, ahead of Aaron Judge:
That’s Judge’s fifth first-inning
dinger of the season, more or less able to start his team with a lead before the game really starts. It’s also Judge’s ninth overall homer, second in baseball behind the currently-unconscious Yordan Alvarez, who cracked his 10th today. Austin Wells helped keep the pressure on in the first, bringing Cody Bellinger in with a sac fly after Cole Ragans walked three of four batters to load the bases. If you stuck around the Stadium through the entire delay, you were certainly rewarded with that big first inning.
Ben Rice continued to burnish his case for abolishing the platoon, taking Ragans to right field for his eighth long ball of the year, and fourth straight game with one:
This looks like a porch job, but it turns out Statcast has it a homer in 21 of the 30 MLB parks. Ben’s maturation as a hitter — and the two walks he took today — sure make him a good candidate to hit in front of Judge atop the lineup.
Trent Grisham helped the club put the game out of reach in the fifth:
For all the fun of the offense though, the real story may have been Ryan Weathers. The Yankee lefty had a second excellent start in three outings, going 7.1 innings and shutting out the Royals, albeit with a little bit of help from the defense behind him:
Getting through the first without allowing three straight home runs — although Bobby Witt Jr. did get a single in the frame — already meant we were off to a good start with Weathers, but more than one inning of work was the process. Weathers does not have a good four-seam fastball, and indeed those three home runs the Angels clocked were all center-cut heaters. Today, just 29 percent of his offerings were the #1, three points lower than that bad outing last Tuesday, and his slider/sweeper… thing was much more active, 28 percent of pitches thrown rather than 20.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Weathers pitches best when he pitches backwards, mixing more breaking and offspeed stuff in in place of his fastball. He was able to do that today, and posted his second-best start of the year. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a second excellent start sandwiched around that Angels game, which may be the start of some consistency for the southpaw.
For all the angst of the five-game losing streak, the Yankees went 5-2 on the week and took care of business to close out the homestand. They’ll be off tomorrow before a long road trip starts in Boston Tuesday night, with Luis Gil scheduled to get the start at Fenway. First pitch from the Hub comes at 6:45pm Eastern.
