ARLINGTON, Texas – Aaron Judge’s stint on the injured list came to an end Tuesday night.
The Yankees’ losing ways did not.
Devin Williams, who allowed a game-tying pinch-hit homer to Joc Pederson with one out in the ninth inning of Monday night’s 10-inning loss to the Rangers, allowed Rowdy Tellez’s two-run, bases-loaded single in the eighth Tuesday night that snapped a scoreless tie and sent the spiraling Yankees to a 2-0 loss in front of 35,399 at Globe Life Field.
The Yankees (60-54), who have lost five straight, have dropped 29 of their last 47 games overall as their plummet in the AL wild-card standings continued.
The Rangers (60-55), who inched within a half-game of the Yankees for the third and final wild-card spot, won despite going 1-for-16 with runners in scoring position with 10 left on base.
“Not good,” Aaron Boone said. “If we don’t win, it doesn’t matter. Half-game back, half-game up, if we play like this and aren’t stringing wins together, it’s not going to matter. I remain confident in this group, but we continue to say that and we have to start making it happen.”
Nathan Eovaldi, a Yankee from 2015-16 and who to this day gives much of the credit to former Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild for the pitcher he’s developed into, made sure little happened Tuesday night.
Eovaldi, who entered 5-0 with a 0.59 ERA in his previous five starts, improved to 10-3 with a stellar 1.38 ERA this season after allowing one hit over eight innings in which he struck out six and did not walk a batter.
“Just couldn’t really get anything going against him,” said Judge, who went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.
Of the rough stretch the team has been on for nearly two months now, Judge said: “We’ve got some work to do … you never want the skids to be longer than a week or two. You’re going to go through some tough things like that, every team does. But it’s about us in this room. We’ve got to take care of this, we have to look ourselves in the mirror, and it starts with each individual in the room.”
Williams, who seemed to have righted himself after a lousy April, has allowed at least one run in four straight outings.
“I mean, I don’t really know what to say at this point,” Williams said. “You just continue to work and keep trying to execute and help the team any way I can.”
He retired Marcus Semien to start the eighth, but Adolis Garcia hit a 102.7 mph bullet to left for a double. The ball went off the glove of Jasson Dominguez, who got a bad jump on the ball off the bat.
“It’s hard to expect him to catch that ball,” Williams said. “He got a glove on it so he came close, but you can’t expect that to be caught.”
Back-to-back walks followed to Pederson and Wyatt Langford to load the bases. Tellez battled for 10 pitches before knocking a full-count changeup to center to make it 2-0. Boone had righties David Bednar and Mark Leiter Jr. – the latter activated earlier in the day – ready in the bullpen but chose to stick with Williams.
“Was maybe going to go with Bednar in a four-out situation, but just kind of shortening the game a little bit,” Boone said. “We didn’t have a lot left down there and Leiter being in a situation where he obviously hasn’t pitched in a while. If I could get it to a four-out scenario, I was going to do it. I thought Devin could still get some swing-and-miss there but obviously didn’t.”
Righty Phil Maton, a trade deadline pickup, allowed a leadoff single to Ryan McMahon in the ninth for the Yankees’ second hit. But pinch hitter Giancarlo Stanton grounded into a 6-4-3 double play and Trent Grisham struck out to end it.
Rookie righthander Will Warren turned in one of his most impressive performances of the season, facing traffic throughout five scoreless innings, but holding the Rangers to 0-for-10 with RISP with six runners stranded. Camilo Doval and Luke Weaver preceded Williams to the mound.
“It sucks. There’s no other way to say it,” Warren said of the team’s performance overall for the better part of two months. “We have to be better, from all ends, and get out of it. There’s no other way to say it: we’ve just got to win tomorrow.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday’s sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
#Yankees #lose #straight #Devin #Williams #woes #continue
