Clarke Schmidt, who has been used to fill one of the injury-induced holes in the Yankees' starting rotation, is having a very strange season. There have been games where he has pitched very badly, and the Yankees have still won. There have also been games where he has pitched very well, and the Yankees have still lost.
Last night's game was one of the latter. I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't against the Boston Red Sox. It's not just that the Red Sox are the Yankees' greatest rivals, it's that they're having a bad season, and the Yankees should be taking advantage of that, and they really didn't. All 3 games of this series were winnable, but the Yankees only got a win in 1 of them.
Schmidt pitched 5 1/3rd innings, allowing just 1 run, on 4 hits and no walks, striking out 4. I don't care how bad the Red Sox are, that is the kind of performance we need against them.
But you've got to score runs, too. Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the 2nd, the Yankees got a walk from Josh Donaldson, a ground-rule double from Billy McKinney, and a hit by Jose Trevino that bounced off 2nd base, one of this season's new larger bases, to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead.
That lead held into the 8th inning, but Michael King couldn't hold it, and he allowed the Sox to tie the game. The game went to extra innings, and the stupid ghost runner rule burned the Yankees. With 1 out, Ron Marinaccio allowed a single to Enrique Hernandez, and that made it 3-2 Boston. The Yankees went down meekly in the bottom of the 10th.
Red Sox 3, Yankees 2. WP: Kenley Jansen (2-3). SV: Chris Martin (1). LP: Marinaccio (2-3), but it was hardly his fault. Each team scored only 7 runs in this series. For the Yankees, despite some shakinness with the bullpen, overall, the pitching was not the problem.
But you take Aaron Judge out of the Yankee lineup through injury, and everybody else suffers. I don't give a damn how good Shohei Ohtani is as a hitter and a picture. There can be no doubt that Judge is the most valuable player in all of baseball. Singlehandedly, he turns the Yankees from a .500 team into a Playoff team.
The Yankees are now 9 1/2 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American league Eastern Division. If the current standings hold to the end of the season, they will end up playing the Houston Astros in the 1st round. Oh, joy.
The Yankees have today off, and then they have to play 2 games in aptly-named Flushing against the Mets. And then they have to go to Boston, to Fenway Park. In the words of the immortal Obi-Wan Kenobi, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
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