The life of a backup position player isn’t a fun one. Sure, you get paid a lot to spend most of the game on the bench and have relatively little blame go your way any time your team loses, but any person who’s ever played sports tells you that it’s not fun to sit on the bench.
It was for that reason that Amed Rosario decided to take less money ahead of the 2024 season to sign with the Tampa Bay Rays. The Yankees reportedly offered him a $4 million contract in their pursuit of bench depth, but Rosario took
a $1.5 million deal to get more playing time with the Rays. A year and a half later, fate brought him to the Yankees at the trade deadline as a right-handed platoon bat off the bench, where he got some big at-bats but ultimately sat in the backup role he once shrugged off.
After hitting free agency this offseason, he elected to accept that bench role and returned to the Yankees on a small deal to fill the same role. It would be rare that he would face a right-handed pitcher, but in the wake of Ryan McMahon’s deep slump to start the year, Aaron Boone decided to give Rosario a start against a pitcher with semi-reverse splits.
That decision may go down as one of Boone’s best moves on an individual game basis ever. Rosario blasted two home runs Tuesday night. Both against righties, both gave the Yankees the lead, and both induced emphatic celebration. His pair of long homers lifted the Yanks back up off the mat, helping them come back from a 3-1 deficit to knock off the (Sacramento) Athletics, 5-3, to open a three-game set.
Cam Schlittler started his outing on the right note, retiring the first six batters he faced with a trio of strikeouts, including one over the American League’s Luis Arraez, Jacob Wilson. Against Aaron Civale, the Yankees drew a couple of walks in the first two innings and had Aaron Judge reach on catcher’s interference, but the only real damage would come on a long home run to left field by Rosario to open the scoring. Funny enough, his first homer at Yankee Stadium since he walked it off for the Mets in the most 2020 game of all time.
Schlittler unraveled in the third. Max Muncy nubbed an infield single, Jeff McNeil lined a hit to right field, and Schlittler was able to jump ahead of the light-hitting Denzel Clarke, 0-2. Despite having two strikes, Clarke laid down a successful bunt, which set up slumbering slugger Nick Kurtz to break out of his rut with a two-run double. Two batters later, Tyler Soderstrom ripped a double down the right-field line to make it 3-1 A’s.
Civale went back out and worked around a two-out walk to Ben Rice to get through the third and had a 1-2-3 fourth, while Schlittler settled back in after a rough third inning. The Yankees finally got something going off Civale in the fifth with a Jose Caballero double and a Judge walk, but the veteran righty was able to strand the tying run in scoring position.
Schlittler wrapped up his outing with two straight clean innings, ultimately finishing with seven strikeouts and three runs allowed in five innings. While it was his worst start of the year, and his velo was down because of the blistering cold, he continued an impressive walkless streak. Once considered his biggest weakness, the 25-year-old is now up to 22 strikeouts and zero walks in 16.2 innings on the season.
Jake Bird got the sixth for the Yankees, trying to bounce back from an awful outing on Sunday. It was a mixed bag, as he gave up a smoked single to Soderstrom, but bounced back to strike out Brent Rooker and get Jacob Wilson out. Boone elected to play to a matchup with Lawrence Butler due up with Brent Headrick, but the lefty walked him, and after a throwing error by Austin Wells on a stolen base, there were runners on the corners. Fortunately, Headrick rebounded to strike out Muncy to end the frame.
Justin Sterner was first out of the bullpen for the Athletics, and he got through the sixth cleanly, striking out Giancarlo Stanton and erasing a Jazz Chisholm Jr. single with an immediate 6-4-3 double play by Rosario. Boone elected to be aggressive with the matchups again in the seventh, taking out Headrick with two outs so Fernando Cruz could get Shea Langeliers. An update on Headrick’s odd reverse splits: righties are 0-for-12 with two walks and eight strikeouts against him, while lefties are 5-for-11 with two doubles, two walks, and two strikeouts.
Wells drilled a leadoff double at 111 mph into the gap to start the bottom of the seventh, but was stranded after Caballero, Grisham, and Judge all grounded out off Sterner. Cruz walked a pair of A’s in the eighth, but tip-toed his way out of a jam with a strikeout of Muncy.
I had a very soft spot for Mark Leiter Jr. last year, almost to a fault. The Yankees played unfathomably poor defense behind him, and he ran an impossibly high BABIP all season long. I believed in his stuff, which was still very strong (along with his peripherals) until a midseason injury. He was non-tendered in the offseason and picked up by the Athletics, where he’s one of their better relievers.
Leiter was tasked with holding the lead in the eighth, which he did not do. Bellinger and Rice hit two jamshot singles to start the frame before an absolutely baffling knuckleball single by Stanton that somehow evaded Wilson at shortstop brought in a run.
Whatever curse was put on Leiter at Yankee Stadium was clearly in full effect.
After the righty narrowly avoided a fourth consecutive bloop single on a diving play by Clarke in center, he faced Rosario, and this was his night. The veteran journeyman absolutely cranked a splitter that stayed up into the second deck, prompting one of the most emphatic home run celebrations I’ve seen from a Yankee in April, to make it 5-3. It’s just his third career multi-homer game and first in nearly five years.
After Caballero’s single and stolen base were stranded to end the inning, it was time for Renegade. David Bednar got the call to face 8-9-1. He fell behind McNeil, but rebounded to strike him out in a lengthy at-bat in what would be the only time he’d have to sweat. A pinch-hitting Carlos Cortes flew out, and Kurtz did the same to end it, with Bednar picking up his fifth save of the season.
The Yankees will look to win their fourth consecutive series to start the season in the middle game of this three-game set, as Will Warren faces former Yankee Luis Severino tomorrow at 7:05pm ET on YES.
