For the first time this season, the Yankees spent a series slugging like they are capable of.
Also a first this week: watching their pitchers getting slugged, slugged and slugged again.
On the final day of a wild, back-and-forth series, the Yankees once again failed to keep the Angels lineup in check, or in the ballpark, as they got clobbered for an 11-4 loss on a hot Thursday afternoon in The Bronx.
The Yankees came into this series having allowed just three home runs through their first 15 games, then got taken deep a stunning 13 times in four games – five by Mike Trout, who homered in each game, and two by Jo Adell, who provided the knockout punch with a grand slam off Ryan Yarbrough in the eighth inning Thursday.
By the end of the day, all that was standing between the Yankees (10-9) and a nine-game losing streak were two ninth-inning blowups from Jordan Romano, which accounted for their two wins in this series – though losing seven of nine is not much better.
Those two comeback wins against Romano offered potential springboards for the Yankees to get out of this early-season funk, but instead, they delivered clunkers after each one.
Through the first 15 games of this series, the Yankees had only hit 14 home runs. In this four-game set, they crushed nine – including one each from Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Ben Rice on Thursday, and still it was not nearly enough on what became a miserable afternoon.
In the side battle of three-time MVPs, Trout out-homered Judge 5-4 in this series. The Yankees could not find a way to contain Trout, who enjoyed a monster throwback series and became the first visiting player ever to homer on four straight days at Yankee Stadium, according to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs.
For the first time this season, Max Fried did not pitch into the seventh inning, instead only lasting 5 1/3 innings before getting knocked out of the game by an RBI double from former Yankee Oswald Peraza – who also crushed a two-run homer in the top of the first – that tied the game 3-3.
Fried left the game with two runners on base and Fernando Cruz allowed both of them to score – plus one of his own – as the Angels (10-10) rallied for four runs in the sixth inning to take a 6-3 lead.
Vaughn Grissom delivered the go-ahead hit with a ground ball off the glove of a diving Amed Rosario at first base before Josh Lowe waged a nine-pitch battle that ended in a broken-bat, two-run bloop to center field.
Then, after Rice’s leadoff homer pulled the Yankees within 6-4 in the sixth, the game unraveled in the eighth. The Angels had runners on first and second with two outs when Yarbrough was called for a balk – which eventually led to Aaron Boone getting ejected before the ninth – at which point the Yankees opted to intentionally walk Trout to load the bases. That set up Adell’s grand slam that was a fitting exclamation point to the slugfest of a series.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
