Good Injury News Can't Score in 9 Innings, Yanks Lose In 10

After making the Toronto Blue Jays look bad 2 nights in a row, the Yankees tried to make it 3 straight at the Rogers Centre last night. And they had the right starting pitcher for it, too: Gerrit Cole. He pitched 6 shutout innings, allowing 7 hits and 2 walks, striking out 6.

Clay Holmes pitched a perfect 7th. Jimmy Cordero pitched a scoreless, 8th. Michael King pitched a scoreless 9th. Put it all together, and it's a 9-hit shutout. All we needed was 1 run.

We didn't get it. The Yankees stranded a man on 2nd base in the 2nd inning, a man on 1st in the 3rd, a man on 2nd with 1 out in the 4th, and a man on 1st with 1 out in the 6th. With 2 out in the top of the 8th, they got 3 straight walks, from Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu. But Anthony Volpe struck out. After 9 innings, it was 0-0.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa was the ghost runner in the top of the 10. Oswaldo Cabrera grounded out, getting him to 3rd. It says a lot about Aaron Judge that they intentionally walked him. It says just as much about Gleyber Torres that he batted before Judge, and they were willing to pitch to him with the go-ahead run on 3rd and less than 2 outs. He justified their thoughts by striking out. After Judge walked, he stole 2nd, to try to draw a throw and let IKF score, but the Jays weren't fooled. And Rizzo struck out.

Wandy Peralta, coming off back-to-back strong performances, was sent out to pitch the bottom of the 10th. Cavan Biggio was the Toronto ghost runner. Whit Merrifield grounded to short, and Volpe mishandled it, allowing Biggio to reach 3rd. To be fair, it was a tough play: If he'd been able to pick the ball up but not throw Merrifield out in time, it would have been scored as a hit. "I gotta back up the pitcher there," he said after the game. "No excuses."

Cabrera was brought in to play the middle of the infield, as a second shortstop, leaving 2 outfielders. The idea was to guard against a ground ball, and hold Biggio at 3rd -- or, if he broke for home, throw him out, or catch him in a rundown. Either way, to make sure the winning run did not score on a grounder.

The umpires met to determine whether this was against MLB's new rule banning infield shifts. They determined that it wasn't: According to the new rule, there must be at least 2 infielders on each side of 2nd base, and there was.

Yogi Berra once said that one of the great things about baseball is that, "It ain't like football: You can't make up no trick plays." But that's far from true. This was, much more so than the so-called "no-doubles defense" (the outfielders playing more deeply than usual), is baseball's answer to football's "prevent defense" (the defensive backs, and sometimes even the linebackers, playing far back, to discourage a last-minute long-distance touchdown pass).

At first, it worked: Alejandro Kirk grounded, appropriately enough, to Volpe, who checked Biggio at 3rd, holding him, and threw Kirk out. This allowed Merrifield to get to 2nd, but his run didn't matter: Only Biggio's did.

That left runners on 2nd & 3rd with 1 out: Any ball out of the infield could still win the game. The sensible move would be to walk the next batter, to load the bases, and set up an out at any base, and maybe even an inning-ending double play; and pitch to the following batter, Santiago Espinal, who was batting just .172. That's Aaron Hicks territory. (Hicks was batting .159 when he went on the Injured List.)

That would have been the sensible move. But because the Yankees' manager is Aaron Boone, and he does whatever Brian Cashman and the analytics boys tell him to do, he decided not to walk the next batter. That was Danny Jansen, and he was batting .185. His lifetime batting average is .219. Kenley Jansen (no relation) has a higher lifetime batting average, and he's a relief pitcher! (He's 3-for-9, for .333.)

Or maybe, just maybe, Boone was ignoring the analytics, and decided, "If Peralta can't get this bum out, maybe he doesn't belong in the major leagues." Well, maybe I would have thought that. But I still would have walked Jansen.

Boone didn't order him walked. Peralta threw him one pitch. It was obvious: Jake Bauers, in left field, turned around, took a couple of steps, and turned back around, because it was hopeless. Home run. Blue Jays 3, Yankees 0. WP: Jordan Romano (3-2). No save. LP: Peralta (2-1).

I could blame Peralta. But those runs were unearned. I could blame Volpe. But he's a rookie. I could blame Boone, for bad strategy. But who's kidding who? In 10 innings, the Yankees got only 3 hits, and drew 5 walks, but scored no runs. This, after scoring 35 runs in their previous 5 games.

More bad news: As expected, Domingo Germán received a 10-game suspension for using "sticky stuff" on the mound on Monday night. He will miss 2 starts. That gives the Yankees 3 holes in the rotation: His slot, and the slots of the injured Luis Severino and Carlos Rodón. And Ian Hamilton also went on the 15-Day Injured List, so he should be back in early June.

But there is some good news: Severino has made progress, and is expected to be activated in time for Sunday's game in Cincinnati. And Boone said that Giancarlo Stanton may return in about a week. But good injury news won't get the Yankees any runs over last night's 1st 9 innings.

So, in the interim -- 1 more game against the Jays tonight, then 2 away to the Cincinnati Reds -- the rotation will be Nestor Cortés tonight, Clarke Schmidt tomorrow, and the starter for Saturday's game is undecided. Looks like another "opener game," so, maybe, on 3 days' rest, Jhony Brito will start, pitch 2 or 3 innings, and then let the bullpen fly. My confidence level for that game is... actually, it's higher than it is for the Schmidt start.