From Theo DeRosa:
It didn’t take long for Yankees star Aaron Judge to realize Sutter Health Park is “a good place to hit.”
Judge came up just shy of two home runs in Friday’s series opener against the Athletics, settling instead for a booming double and a warning-track flyout. Still, he felt encouraged by the results.
“A couple balls had no business getting to the track like that, but they did,” Judge said after Friday’s win. “So I look forward to tomorrow.”
On Saturday, Judge showed exactly why he was excited to have another shot.
He reclaimed the outright Major League home run lead with No. 13, a fourth-inning solo dinger to right-center in the Yankees’ 11-7 loss to the A’s, then hit his 14th homer of 2025 in the sixth, a 433-foot solo blast to center.
Fernando Cruz has been EXCELLENT this season, to the point where giving up three runs today only raises his ERA to 2.66, but today, he was fucked on one flyball, was quasi-fucked on another flyball (it was hit well, but it still should have been caught), and then gave up a game-losing three run home run to the Athletics’ clean-up hitter, Shea Langeliers.
It sucked, but occasionally even good relievers are going to have a bad outing.
What was MUCH more annoying was Tim Hill coming in to the finish the inning, but somehow NOT pitch the eighth inning. Ian Hamilton came in, and Hamilton struggled the whole inning, but had JUST gotten a big strikeout with the bases loaded to get to within one out of getting out of things and keep it a 7-6 game heading into the ninth inning (with the top of the order against the excellent Athletic closer, Mason Miller), but Boone, for some absurd reason, decided to bring in Tyler Matzek, a once-excellent reliever who hadn’t pitched regularly since 2022, and who had ONLY been pitching in low leverage innings, innings that, might I add, he has regularly been giving up hard contact in, to preserve the lead, and shock of all shocks, Matzek gave up hard contact and suddenly a 7-6 game was an 11-6 game.
And wouldn’t you know it, the fucking Yankees then scored a run off of the star Athletics closer, Miller.
Fucking nonsense by Boone.
Carlos Rodon also had a poor outing, putting the Yankees into a 4-0 hole before they fought back to take a 6-4 lead into the seventh inning, but the Cruz’s awful inning (and the Yankee outfielders’ bad defense) led to three runs in the seventh.
The Yankees haven’t even announced who is starting on Sunday just yet, which is weird.
The featured image is Cruz watching the home run head for the stands.
Came across a site Bleeding Yankee Blue which seems to be mostly devoted to Boone hatred.
In fairness, Boone.
It’s like Was Watching, but slightly less unhinged
Yarborough v Severino
B Rice (L) DH
A Judge (R) RF
C Bellinger (L) CF
P Goldschmidt (R) 1B
J Domínguez (S) LF
A Volpe (R) SS
A Wells (L) C
O Cabrera (S) 3B
J Vivas (L) 2B
Volpe anywhere above 8 is just insane
Ahead of Cabrera, and even Vivas, is not incredible.
Wells is certainly a higher-in-the-line-up bat, but that would mean just flipping consecutive spots in the line-up.
Boone deserves all the hatred and then some. A normal manager and this team would be at least 5 games up. Maybe more. This is ridiculous.
Someone here pointed out that over Boone’s tenure the teams’ players have outperformed projections. Obviously a good thing, but a very general thing. To take a statement that general and conclude that it’s Boone is not terribly unlike touting RBI as a clearly batter-dependent offensive stat. There are a million things that might go into that (for example, the Yankees often having older, but elite older players, where inevitable projections of age-related decline might often not hold). The almost incredible proportion of games determined, or potentially determined, by bad Boone decisions, decisions we analyze here, amount to a contrastingly concrete argument, and the evidence is too clear to be diminished by the “outperforming projections” thing, at least until we have at least some clear reason to attribute that outcome specifically to some concrete influence of Boone, and not any o f the many other possible causes.
This was one of the criticisms of SG’s CAIRO–he built in less of an age penalty than other systems and was accused of doing it to make the Yankees look better, although rigging a projection system makes zero sense. Plus he had the year where CAIRO beat all the other systems.
That’s where that meme came from?!
I never knew!
I mean to be fair it was one guy’s opinion but he was and still is a major league scout
DJ 1/3 with a walk. I bet we see him Tue or maybe Friday.
Winans 5ip 0r 3h 3k. He’s on pace to take Carrasco,’s spot.
Lo 1ip 0rhk
So obviously the new guy gets sent down for Lo when Lo is ready, but who loses a roster spot for Winans, if Winans joins the rotation? Are they ready to give up on Matzek?