From Bryan Hoch:
The Yankees have delighted in how big-time power frequently fizzles against Ryan Yarbrough’s herky-jerky throwback style. The left-hander keeps opponents flailing by mixing angles and dotting corners, but he scarcely cracks 90 mph, which means things go wrong in a hurry if his command is off.
That’s what happened on Saturday night. Yarbrough has outdueled the likes of Jacob deGrom and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in recent outings, but he came up short against Garrett Crochet, permitting a season-high eight runs in the Yankees’ 10-7 loss to the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
“They just strung a bunch of hits together,” Yarbrough said. “You feel like you’re not giving up a lot of hard contact, but they’re just finding a lot of holes and putting things in the right place. Then you get some hard contact and things escalate.”
Austin Wells homered and drove in four runs against Crochet, who was tagged for a season-high five runs. But the Bombers fought an uphill battle after Yarbrough faced nine Boston batters in a five-run third inning.
If you look at the comments in the game thread, as soon as Austin Wells hit the three-run home run off of Garret Crochet, I said, effectively, “Well, that’s the high point of this game.” Ryan Yarbrough looked terrible up until that point, and I figured that a 3-1 lead was not going to last, and I was just happy that the Yankees tagged the Red Sox star pitcher for three runs. They actually ended up scoring five on him, which was cool.
However, Yarbrough was just awful. The problem with junk ballers is that if they don’t have their command, they’re, well, you know, just throwing junk up there. It’s just par for the course, it’s not a huge deal. Shit happens. That’s why you almost never see teams start junkballers in the playoffs, because shit goes wrong in a HURRY.
I was impressed with the comeback, and with Aaron Judge sucking and one of their better righthanded bats, Anthony Volpe, unavailable (leading to Pablo fucking Reyes being forced into action). DJ LeMahieu being useful is huge for this team. As having a #9 hitter who can hit a little changes this team a LOT. LeMahieu is now up to a 91 OPS+. EVERY OTHER YANKEE REGULAR is over 100 OPS+.
The featured image is Pablo Reyes, who was only playing third base because of Volpe’s injury (and Boone oddly sitting the red-hot Jazz Chisholm against a tough lefty, while sending the Martian out there like a lamb to the slaughter), being unable to corral Trevor Story’s three-run double in the third.
By the way, don’t look now, but the Yankees are actually only 4.5 games up on the second place Blue Jays, who came back to beat the Twins last night. Yikes.