The dream of 162-0 is dead. The hype of the torpedo bat is over. The Yankees have indeed lost a baseball game.
The bullpen couldn’t hold a lead together and a very good lineup pounced all over it. Mark Leiter Jr. gave up the decisive grand slam in the eighth, but had the top of the lineup managed to do some damage, maybe we never would have been in that position to start with. All in all, this team is not actually invincible, and Arizona topped the Yankees 7-3 tonight.
We certainly saw the best of Will Warren tonight. He sat down the first six Diamondbacks he faced, went five innings allowing a pair of runs, and ended his day with a gutsy strikeout of Corbin Carroll. The walks are still an issue — Warren allowed four, the same number of strikeouts he recorded, and a critical two-out walk to Geraldo Perdomo set up Carroll’s third-inning home run (the only hit he allowed).
Warren’s mechanics can be a little funky from time to time, and I wonder if that inconsistency is why you see so much volatility in his control. It really does seem to come and go inning by inning. He might be a candidate to pitch out of the stretch all the time, forcing him into a simpler delivery that may solve some of that volatility.
Still, for all that, you’ll take this kind of start every day from your rookie, fill-in starter. With two outs in the fifth and Carroll representing the tying run at home, Aaron Boone elected to stick with his 25-year-old righty, and Warren rewarded his skipper’s patience:
Now for a couple innings there, it wouldn’t have mattered whether the Yankees were using torpedo bats or two-piece composites, Corbin Burnes was dealing in his D-backs debut. Just like Warren, he was perfect through the first two innings, but Jasson Domínguez had something to say about that:
That was Jasson’s first home run of the year, getting him in on the power game we’ve seen from other youngsters like Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe. The homer followed a really nice catch in left from the Martian, and as Paul O’Neill pointed out, these are the kinds of games that boost a player’s confidence and help him prove to himself he can hang in the majors. Domínguez has all the tools he needs, he just needs to pull it all together and today was a good example of that.
Volpe meanwhile kept his odd season going:
Volpe has just three hits on the season, but they’ve all left the yard. It seems he’s committing to more fly balls this year, and while it’s too early to draw any conclusions, it’s been interesting to see that if he gets the ball in the air, it leaves the park.
But the biggest hit for the Yankees wasn’t a hit at all, but an error from ol’ Mr. Annoying, Josh Naylor. With two on and two out, Burnes was this close to getting out of a jam with the No. 9 hitter at the plate:
All in all the vibes were pretty good until Mark Leiter Jr. came in in the eighth inning, a sentence I’m sure I’ve written at least 17 times since last year’s Trade Deadline.
I had to get a joke in out of annoyance, because the Snakes did push a run across against Tim Hill. Randal Grichuk started the frame with a double because of course he did, and came home on a single a batter later. Only then did Leiter ruin everything, walking two batters to load the bases. He did get Naylor to strike out, and with Suárez completely ignoring Leiter’s fastball, Mark served up a splitter that didn’t split nearly as much as it needed to:
In some ways maybe we needed this one. The Yankees had gotten away with some meh starts from their pitchers and some seriously bad defense on Saturday, but the Brewers’ pitching staff was just so bad that it covered that up. Some of that karma was spent tonight, and that’s baseball. Mark Leiter Jr. is a deeply frustrating pitcher to watch, but then the top five in the Yankee order went just 1-for-18 tonight, and that won’t get it done either.
Down to the last strike, at least Ben Rice gave us something to smile about — an absolute nuke off a left-handed reliever to boot:
John Sterling’s not in the booth anymore, but that’s baseball, Suzyn. Pick yourself up and even up the series tomorrow, when we see a matchup of each team’s Opening Day starter. Carlos Rodón will face off against Zac Gallen with a 7:05pm Eastern start time.
