Yankees

Yankees Drop 2-1 Frustration Game After Trey Yesavage Silences the Bats

By ••6 min read
Yankees Drop 2-1 Frustration Game After Trey Yesavage Silences the Bats

The Yankees wasted a Cam Schlittler start, and that is the part that should annoy everybody.

Listen, sometimes baseball gives you a clean loss.

You get beat badly, you turn the page, nobody has to overthink it.

This was not that.

This was one of those annoying, tight, rain-delayed, “one swing probably changes the whole night” type of losses where the Yankees had enough pitching to win, but the offense never really showed up until it was basically too late.

The Blue Jays beat the Yankees 2-1 on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, and the final score tells you exactly what kind of game this was. Toronto did not exactly run the Yankees out of their own building. They scored 2 runs. No homers. No defensive mess from the Yankees. No bullpen explosion.

Just one bad inning, one long at-bat, and a Yankees lineup that spent most of the night getting handled by Trey Yesavage.

Yesavage Was the Story, Whether Yankees Fans Like It or Not

Let’s be real: Trey Yesavage was nasty.

The Blue Jays right-hander gave Toronto 6 scoreless innings, allowing just 2 hits, walking nobody, and striking out 8. That is not some cute little “he battled” line. That is domination.

And the Yankees helped him look even better by doing absolutely nothing early.

Aaron Judge had one of those nights you just throw in the trash and never speak of again. He struck out 4 times. Four. You cannot sugarcoat that. When your best hitter goes down like that in a 2-1 game, it is going to stand out.

Ben Rice went 0-for-4. Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with 2 strikeouts. Anthony Volpe went hitless. Ryan McMahon went hitless. That is too many dead spots in a game where the margin was basically one mistake.

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The Yankees finished with 6 hits and 0 walks.

Zero walks.

That matters. Because when the offense is not hitting for power, you have to at least create traffic. Make the pitcher work. Steal a run somewhere. Instead, Yesavage got to attack, and the Yankees spent most of the night playing from underneath even before the scoreboard said they were trailing.

Cam Schlittler Deserved Better Than This

And do not skip over Cody Bellinger’s defensive play in the 2nd inning, because that mattered too.

That was one of those plays that does not scream in the box score, but it absolutely helped keep the game locked at 0-0 early. Bellinger read it, covered ground, and made the kind of clean defensive play that saves a pitcher from having to work through extra traffic.

That is why this loss is even more annoying. The Yankees got the pitching. They got the defense. Bellinger later doubled and scored their only run. The little winning pieces were there.

The bats just did not cash in enough.

Cam Schlittler was not perfect, but he was absolutely good enough to win.

He went 6 innings, gave up 8 hits, 2 runs, walked 2, and struck out 7. His ERA moved to 1.50, which tells you everything about how good he has been. Most nights, if your starter gives you that line, you take it and say thank you.

The problem came in the 7th.

Toronto loaded the bases with nobody out after an infield single, a walk, and a bunt single. That is baseball being annoying at its finest. Not a missile into the gap. Not a three-run bomb. Just traffic, pressure, and suddenly the whole game is sitting on one at-bat.

Then Andrés Giménez had the at-bat of the night.

He fouled off pitch after pitch, stayed alive, and eventually drew an 11-pitch walk to force in the first run. That chased Schlittler, and one out later Vladimir Guerrero Jr. lifted a sacrifice fly off Jake Bird to make it 2-0.

That was it.

That was the game.

Two runs in the 7th, and with the way the Yankees were swinging, it felt like Toronto had scored 6.

The Ninth Inning Tease

Of course, the Yankees waited until the 9th to make it interesting. Because why make it easy, right?

Cody Bellinger doubled. Jazz Chisholm picked up his third hit of the night. Paul Goldschmidt brought in a run on a comebacker, cutting it to 2-1.

Now the crowd wakes up. Now there is life. Now you start thinking maybe they steal one they had no business stealing.

But Louis Varland shut the door. He struck out Amed Rosario with a 99 mph fastball to end it and earned his 6th save.

That final at-bat summed up the whole night. The Yankees got close enough to make you care, but not close enough to actually finish the job.

Jazz Chisholm Showed Up

If there was one bright spot offensively, it was Jazz Chisholm.

He went 3-for-4 and was basically the only Yankee who looked comfortable for most of the night. Bellinger had the double and scored the lone run. Goldschmidt drove him in.

That was the offense.

Three guys doing something, and everybody else mostly disappearing.

You are not beating good pitching like that. You are definitely not beating a starter throwing 6 scoreless with 8 strikeouts when your lineup refuses to build innings.

This One Stings Because the Pitching Was There

Jake Bird gave the Yankees a clean inning after Schlittler exited. Yerry Cruz was excellent, throwing 2 scoreless innings with 3 strikeouts.

The Yankees pitching staff struck out 11 Blue Jays hitters and allowed only 2 runs all night.

That should be enough.

At home, with this lineup, against a division opponent, that should be enough to at least give yourself a real chance before the 9th inning.

Instead, the Yankees waited too long, chased too much, and let Yesavage control the entire tone of the game.

Final Take

This was not a disaster loss, but it was a frustrating one.

The Yankees are now 30-20, still in a strong position, but games like this are reminders that pitching depth only takes you so far. At some point, the offense has to back up these starters.

Schlittler gave them a chance.

The bullpen gave them a chance.

Jazz gave them a chance.

The rest of the lineup did not do enough.

That is the story.

The Yankees do not need to panic over a 2-1 loss in May. Nobody should be doing that. But they absolutely should be annoyed, because this was a very winnable game that slipped away because the bats were asleep for 8 innings.

And against Toronto, in your own ballpark, with a young starter giving you another strong outing?

You have to find a way to win that game.

They did not.

Now Carlos Rodón gets the ball in the series finale, and the Yankees need to make sure this does not turn into one of those annoying little offensive stretches where everybody starts pressing at the same time.

Because the pitching did its job.

The bats owe them one.

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