Cold Weather Ice Bomber's Bats in Motown

Detroit, MI — The Yankees drop their third straight game on Tuesday afternoon in freezing cold Detroit.

Sunday’s loss in Pittsburgh is the origin of this story, where Will Warren had 2 meltdown innings, after retiring the first 8 batters. Now, he got bailed out by an incredible comeback in the top of the 9th inning, sending the game to extras. The 10th and 11th innings were a preview to what the next 2 days looked like. The team was unable, TWICE, to score a run with the extra-inning runner. The game was lost in the bottom of the eleventh inning on a Tommy Pham RBI single of closer, Devin Williams.

Monday afternoon as the snow was falling in Detroit, Carlos Rodón took the mound. For the most part, Rodón looked very sharp throughout his performance, but got into some tough trouble. After walking the eight hitter in the third inning, Home Plate Umpire Bruce Dreckman missed a pivotal 3-2 pitch that was a Strike, but was called a Ball. This lead directly to a 3-run Home Run by Andy Ibanez.

Rodón proceeded to give up 2 more runs (1 Earned) for the rest of the game. It seems like a trend that Rodón does not pitch well at Comerica and in bad weather.

Now we get to the offense. They stunk. Simple. This team lives and dies by the Home Run and they have not hit one in 3 games. Coincidence? I think not. Instead of working counts, players are swinging at the first pitch and not working the count and making the pitchers work. The Yankees scored 2 runs, 1 on an Aaron Judge RBI single and the other on an E4 in the 8th inning. Thats it on offense. The did have opportunities, but costly base running errors squandered them, like Ben Rice getting picked off at third base after a 1-out triple with Judge at the plate. That’s it from Monday’s snow game.

Tuesday’s game was the most frustrating of the year so far, by a LONG shot. The Yankees began the afternoon with back-to-back singles off reigning Cy-Young winner Tarik Skubal, but a Judge strikeout, a Jazz Groundout and a Volpe strikeout looking. That summed up the day. The Yankees slept walked through the game, not recording an extra base hit. When asked in the postgame about the Yankee’s batter approach against Skubal, second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said that Skubal pitched “completely different" than their scouting report suggested.

This was Aaron Boone’s thoughts on the offense:

(NY Daily News): “I don’t know if I see highs and lows. I mean, we haven’t scored the last 2 days. We score 3 or 4 or 5, and people talk about it as a low. That’s just not reality. It’s a tough game to hit. We got shut down here these last, really, few days. Last day in Pittsburgh, [Andrew] Heaney shut us down a lot in those middle innings before we were able to rally late. Yesterday, I thought we had good at-bats. We didn’t put the points on the board, didn’t chase [Casey] Mize, but I thought we had the right at-bats going. Today, Skubal got a lead and just beat us, period.”

The Yankee pitching is becoming a concern. Carrasco did not pitch well, at all. Here was his final line:

An account on X posted this while I was writing this, and I felt the need to call attention to it:

This speaks less of performance, and more of Roster Construction as a whole. The Yankees front office thought they can just get away with Will Warren and Cookie Carrasco making big starts, and it’s failed. They need to find a quality starter from somewhere till Gil returns in July and it would be nice to add another quality starter for the postseason push, because it would be criminal if the Yankees rolled out Cookie Carrasco and/or Will Warren for a big start down the stretch.

The lineup is also an issue. The Yankees need a Right-Handed bat desperately. They can’t wait till July. It’s been a theme in the first two weeks that opposing teams just go to a lefty reliever to get out of trouble or get through late innings. It creates a huge loss for the team and until Stanton comes back, the team will continue to struggle against lefty starters.

I think it’s going to get better. It could be the weather affecting this team in a negative way, but I think it’s a combination of not enough right-handed offense and a struggling pitching rotation that was not constructed well enough.

Yanks back at it again from Motown tomorrow with Max Fried on the mound. (I will do a recap article either Tomorrow evening or on Thursday morning).

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