Yankees.com: Yanks get leadoff blast, then get sloppy in loss to Guards

From Henry Palattella:

Things started out great for the Yankees on Tuesday night.

Giancarlo Stanton took onfield batting practice for the first time this year. Ben Rice — his understudy, who’s keeping the designated hitter spot warm for him — smashed an opposite-field home run on the first pitch of the game.

Jazz Chisholm Jr. doubled New York’s lead with a sacrifice fly.

But then things unraveled in the sixth inning.

The Guardians managed to scrape three runs across in the bottom of the frame on the back of five hits and a costly wild pitch. That ended up being enough to put the Yankees in a hole, as their lineup tallied only one hit over the final three innings and limped to the finish in a 3-2 loss at Progressive Field.

I was getting on JC Escarra SO hard for what I thought was him allowing two-base advancement on a wild pitch, but to be fair, Kwan was stealing third ALREADY, so fair enough, I can’t complain too much on that. Escarra definitely should have gotten to the ball quicker, though, but it wasn’t AS bad as I first thought. It was just emblematic of that entire inning, which was just terrible luck for the Yankees throughout the inning.

To refresh – Warren gives up a legit single to Kwan. Fair enough, Kwan is a really good hitter.
Then Warren gives up a groundball to Nolan Jones that was THISCLOSE to being a double play, but instead, it got into the outfield. Kwan didn’t advance to third, and with his speed, that tells you all you need to know about how unlikely of a hit it was.

Okay, so now it’s first and second and no outs with the heart of the lineup coming up. Already a really bad situation, and already due to some bad luck on the Jones groundball.

So Mark Leiter Jr. comes in, and he strikes out Jose Ramirez. Big out. Then the at-bat where Leiter was most at fault in the entire game. He throws a wild pitch as Kwan and Jones are stealing second and third, so Kwan scores on the wild pitch, and Jones moves to third. Manzardo then hits a flyball that should have been caught by Aaron Judge, but not only did Judge not catch it, but when it was clear that he wasn’t going to catch it, Judge still tried to dive for it, and it got past him, becoming a double instead of a single. Carlos Santana grounds out, sending Manzardo to third with two outs. Leiter then pitches around Bo Naylor because he feels more confident against Angel Martinez. He then gets weak contact from Martinez, but Volpe can’t make the play, and the Guardians take the lead on the infield hit (initially ruled an error, but hometown scorers have been fucking the Yankees recently). The NEXT batter then gets ANOTHER infield hit on ANOTHER piece of weak contact. Tim Hill then comes in to finish the inning, getting Rocchio with the bases loaded.

So Leiter, who has been pitching very well, comes in and gets a strikeout, throws a REALLY unlucky wild pitch (as it happened to be on the pitch that the runners were stealing on), and then gets fucked on three poorly hit balls. You just can’t get too mad about shit luck like that. Shit happens.

The bigger issue is that the Yankees continually put guys on base against Tanner Bibee, and just kept grounding into double plays. Then the vaunted Cleveland bullpen came into the game late, and the Yankees had no chance. Judge and Rice were once again the only guys hitting at all.

I can see the argument that Bellinger and Jazz were both All Stars in the past, so you stick with them longer in the middle of the lineup, but man, Volpe has just been embarrassing in how pitchers just son him every fucking time. Gaddis, who is a great reliever, barely even celebrated when he struck out Volpe on four pitches to strand two runners in the eighth, because Gaddis was clearly pretty darn confident that he was going to strike Volpe out. And his confidence was well-merited. I know Wells and Dominguez have been sucking, too, and Waldo isn’t much better (just empty batting average), but I’d still move all three of those guys ahead of Volpe. We’ve seen Volpe get his shit together before after being demoted to the 9th spot in the lineup, and I think they should try it again.

DJ LeMahieu is obviously returning soon (he had an outstanding rehab debut, 3-3 with a homer and a double), and I bet we’ll see LeMahieu take Volpe’s spot in the lineup. If LeMahieu shows ANYthing, you could probably lengthen the lineup pretty nicely by leading LeMahieu off.

LeMahieu 3B
Rice DH
Judge RF
Bellinger CF
Goldschmidt 1B
Jazz 2B
Dominguez LF
Wells C
Volpe SS

Of course, the issue is that LeMahieu will obviously show you nothing, and he’ll suck just as bad as these other guys, perhaps worse. But boy, if LeMahieu could bring ANYthing, I’d probably still prefer him to Waldo, who is just such an empty hitter out there.

In any event, in good news, besides the new Tony Gwynn, Aaron Judge, becoming a .400 hitting singles hitter (I think I’ll take him hitting .300 with more than one home run in eighteen fucking games), Will Warren was generally OUTSTANDING. He really looked so, so fucking good. Honestly, he was so good that, in the future, you probably just let him try to work his way out of the 6th inning jam. One of the hallmarks of Matt Blake’s approach with pitchers is getting guys to GO AFTER DUDES. You see this with Mark Leiter this season versus last. He just goes at dudes, and doesn’t fuck around like he used to. That’s generally what Fernando Cruz has been doing, as well. It’s what Luke Weaver has been doing. It’s what Tim Hill has been doing. It was what Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt do when they’re on their game. It’s what Carlos Rodon categorically refuses to do, except when he occasionally buys in. Warren was aggressive in this game, and the results were just so good. The one thing you can really be excited about from this game is to imagine Will Warren becoming a major part of this rotation.

The featured image is the awful play at home with Kwan. Escarra should have still gotten to the ball much faster.