Yankees snap scoreless innings streak but drop sixth straight
Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe walks to the dugout after striking out during the ninth inning of a game the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. Credit: Noah K. Murray
And on the fourth day … they scored.
But still didn’t win.
The Yankees, with one of the sport’s best offenses the first two-plus months of the season, came into Wednesday night’s game against the Angels in an inexplicable skid, having been shut out three straight games and without a run in their last 29 innings.
They ran that streak to 30 1/3 before Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s one-out homer in the second inning off Angels righthander Jack Kochanowicz put an end to it.
Their losing streak, however, continued as the Yankees, with Anthony Volpe committing a key error in the eighth inning, dropped their sixth straight with a 3-2 loss to the Angels in front of a vexed crowd of 43,255 at the Stadium.
“That’s baseball,” said Aaron Judge, who went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, extending his current skid to 3-for-28 with 17 strikeouts in his last eight games. “We know what we signed up for. You’re going to play 162 [games], you’re going to hit a little rut like this. But you can’t mope about it, you’ve just got to show up the next day and be ready to play.”
The Yankees (42-31), who also got a home run from Cody Bellinger, managed just three hits.
“You guys see how individually guys can go through it a little bit, and the same thing goes for a team as a whole,” said Ben Rice, who got his first career start at catcher and went 0-for-1 with a walk and threw out a base runner trying to steal second. “The reality of it is, we’re a really good team. We’ve got a great lineup and I’m sure we’ll dig ourselves out of it.”
The offense of late, which has produced all of seven runs in their last seven games, could be encapsulated by the eighth inning.
After the Angels (36-37) took a 3-2 lead in the top half of the inning, when Volpe committed his team-high ninth error, Angels righthander Ryan Zeferjahn walked Jasson Dominguez and hit pinch hitter Austin Wells with a pitch. But Trent Grisham twice failed to get a bunt down, then fouled out to Sayville’s Logan O’Hoppe, the Anaheim catcher. Judge, swinging at a first-pitch changeup from righty Connor Brogdon, flied to center, and Cody Bellinger fouled out to third.
“They were playing the bunt pretty aggressively there,” Aaron Boone said of taking the bunt off with the count 2-and-1 on Grisham. “So felt like there was a little bit of an open field there and was going to take our shot there, once he was ahead in the count and him [Zeferjahn] struggling to throw strikes to the first two guys and Grish’s ability to control the zone, I felt that was the way to go."
Paul Goldschmidt reached to start the ninth against veteran closer Kenley Jansen when third baseman Luis Rengifo made a wild throw to first. Chisholm, however, flied to left, J.C. Escarra lined to right and Volpe struck out.
The Angels broke a 2-2 tie in the top of the eighth as Fernando Cruz, who escaped a second-and-third-one-out situation in the seventh, suddenly lost command of his splitter, walking three of four batters to load the bases with one out. In came lefthander Tim Hill to face Jo Adell, who homered off Ryan Yarbrough in the fifth inning. Adell hit a sharp grounder to short where Volpe bobbled the ball, killing the chance of an inning-ending double play. Volpe then misfired to second on the short throw, allowing Mike Trout, who led off the inning with a walk, to score to make it 3-2. Hill did get out of the inning.
“Right off the bat I have to be aggressive, go get the ball and make the play,” said Volpe, who felt he allowed the ball to play him. “I messed up.”
Yarbrough allowed two runs – coming on a first-inning homer by Nolan Schanuel and the fifth-inning blast to Adell – over 5 1/3 effective innings.
Kochanowicz, who came into the game 3-8 with a 5.53 ERA, allowed two runs and two hits over 5 1/3 innings in which he struck out a season-high eight.
“When we’re not scoring a lot of runs, we have to execute on the highest level on the little things,” Boone said. “And we haven’t done that this week a handful of times when we’ve had some opportunities.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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