Opportunity came knocking for the Yankees on Tuesday night with the arrival of the Tigers for three games at the Stadium. They made it to the door, but couldn’t get it open.
The Yankees were in striking distance of AL East-leading Toronto and with perhaps even a shot during this series to overtake the Blue Jays and Detroit for the No. 1 seeding for the postseason after winning 18 of their last 25. And they met the moment with a performance that was nothing short of ghastly.
Things looked pretty good at the outset when Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger hit solo homers to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. But the Tigers’ Parker Meadows evened the score with a two-run shot off starter Will Warren and then relievers Fernando Cruz and Mark Leiter Jr. were dreadful as Detroit batted around and scored eight runs before making an out in the seventh.
In all, the Tigers scored nine in the frame and the final score of this abomination — witnessed by 35,653 — was 12-2.
Asked what he made of the way the game devolved, Warren replied, “That’s tough. I don’t know what to say. I haven’t seen anything like that before.”
“It just got away from us,” manager Aaron Boone said.
The night became a total washout when Toronto rallied from a two-run deficit in the ninth inning against Houston to win, 4-3, in extra innings and extend its AL East lead over the Yankees to three games.
Cruz was the first man out of the bullpen after Warren threw six solid innings of two-run ball and exited with the score tied 2-2. He faced five batters and allowed two hits and three walks.
Leiter was up next. He faced four Tigers, gave up two hits and a walk, hit a batter and threw a wild pitch. He was lifted after Kerry Carpenter’s two-run triple made the score 10-2. Tim Hill got the three outs to bring the inning to a merciful end, but did allow an inherited runner to score.
According to statistician Katie Sharp, this was the first time in franchise history that the Yankees had two different pitchers in a single game allow at least four runs without recording and out.
“Sometimes things just don’t go your way,” Cruz said. “I was battling, obviously . . . It’s [a] night we just need to forget.”
“I trust every single one of those guys,” Aaron Judge said of his relievers. “They’ve gotten a lot of big outs for us, especially Cruz and Leiter, but just didn’t get done there and kind of put us in a bad spot.”
Judge’s 44th homer of the season came on the Yankees’ second at-bat of the game and put them ahead 1-0. He drove Casey Mize’s splitter 412 feet and it touched down several rows up in the rightfield stands next to the home bullpen.
Judge’s 359th career homer moves him out of a tie with Yogi Berra on the franchise’s all-time list and into sole possession of fifth place. Joe DiMaggio sits in fourth at 361.
“Passing Yogi, it’s pretty, pretty special, an all-time great Yankee,” Judge said. “You know what he meant to this organization . . . He’s the definition of a true Yankee. So anytime you’re on a list with a guy like that it’s pretty remarkable.”
Bellinger upped the lead to 2-0 with a solo shot into the second deck in right with one out in the fourth, his 28th home run. But the lead didn’t last.
Warren cruised through the first four innings with relative ease, allowing only a one-out double in the first inning to Gleyber Torres, who tipped his cap to the warm applause that greeted him on his first trip to the ballpark as a visitor. But the righthander hit a speed bump in the fifth when Detroit tied it 2-2 on Meadows’ two-run homer to right.
He retired the Tigers in order in the sixth and exited with the game still tied, having allowed the two runs on two hits and a walk with five strikeouts.
That the Yankees would come into a series with an eye on a division title and a chance to sidestep a wild card series, was almost unimaginable after they lost to Houston on Aug. 10, fell to 62-56 and were hanging on to a playoff spot.
Since then they’ve been the best hitting and pitching team in the league, tops in the AL in home runs (60), OPS (.870), runs per game (5.5) and ERA (3.27).
Asked about the big picture following this bullpen meltdown, Boone said: “We have the guys down there to get it done . . . Tonight’s a tough night, but it doesn’t change a lot of the good things that have happened in some of these games we’ve been able to close out.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
#Yankees #runs #7th #inning #ugly #loss #Tigers
