Sometimes, It Happens Too Often

After taking the 1st 2 games of a home series with the Seattle Mariners, the Yankees handed the ball to Domingo Germán. He was awful: He allowed 4 runs in the 1st inning, before the Yankees could even come to bat. In all, he gave up 10 runs, including 2 home runs each in the 2nd and the 4th, before Aaron Boone finally took him out.

Was this one of those games where the Yankee bats made up for a bad pitching performance? Not by a long shot. Billy McKinney drew a walk in the 2nd, Anthony Volpe drew a walk in the 3rd, and Anthony Rizzo drew a walk in the 4th. The no-hitter lasted until the 6th, when Gleyber Torres and Rizzo hit back-to-back singles. But Giancarlo Stanton grounded into an inning-ending double play. Volpe singled in the 8th, but this came to nothing.

In the 9th, Boone let Isiah Kiner-Falefa pitch. He got Cal Raleigh to fly to center, struck Eugenio Suárez out, and got Mike Ford to pop up. A 1-2-3 inning. In the bottom of the 9th, Rizzo walked, and IKF hit a home run. This made him the 1st Yankee pitcher to hit a home run since Lindy McDaniel on September 28, 1972, before the institution of the designated hitter.

But the Yankees could get no closer. Mariners 10, Yankees 2. WP: Bryan Woo (1-1). No save. LP: Germán (4-5).

Germán looked puzzled, but not depressed, in a postgame interview on YES with Meredith Marakovits. He said, through his translator, "Sometimes, it happens. It's hard to figure out where the issue is, if it's mechanical, if it's the release point, are they adjusting, are they seeing the pitch well."

Sometimes, it happens. But, as Yogi Berra might have said if he'd thought of it, sometimes it's happened to the Yankees too often these last few years.

Tonight, the Yankees begin a home series with the Texas Rangers. Clarke Schmidt will again fill a hole in the Yankee rotation. The Rangers have a hole in theirs as well, as, at press time, they had not yet announced their starting pitcher for tonight.