Two-run homers by Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr. power Padres over Yankees

What’s that people always say? That baseball is a game of nuance, a game of inches?

And sure, that’s true. But then there are nights like Friday in the Bronx, when baseball primarily became a game of hitting a ball halfway to 161st Street. Unfortunately for the Yankees, they weren’t the ones taking aim at the 4 train.

The Yankees sputtered offensively and the scary (if underperforming) Padres showed exactly what they can do, hitting two monster second-deck home runs en route to San Diego’s 5-1 win at the Stadium.

After losing to the Orioles, 3-1, on Thursday night, the Yankees — playing without manager Aaron Boone, who was suspended for one game for a recent spate of ejections — have managed only two runs and 10 hits in the last 20 innings. On Friday, they squandered a solid major-league debut by Randy Vasquez, who made only one significant mistake in his 4 2⁄3 innings (granted, it was a 432-foot home run off the bat of Juan Soto). It also was Vasquez’s first time at a major-league game. He was optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after the game.

Soto hit his two-run shot in the fifth and Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a 439-foot two-run homer off Ron Marinaccio in the sixth. Soto also scored in the ninth on former Yankee Rougned Odor’s single off Ryan Weber.

The power differential Friday served to further underline one of the Yankees’ weaknesses this year (and most years) — when they don’t homer, they struggle to score. Despite having the fourth-most home runs in baseball, they’re 14th in OPS and 25th in on-base percentage, and they struck out 11 times Friday night.

Granted, Padres starter Joe Musgrove looked untouchable at times. He was perfect through 3 2⁄3 before Anthony Rizzo’s sinking line drive to left fell for a single. DJ LeMahieu followed with an infield single but Harrison Bader hit into a forceout at second to erase the threat. That was the only runner the Yankees got into scoring position until the sixth, when they scored their only run on Rizzo’s RBI groundout.

“We were up against a tough pitcher,” said Aaron Judge, who struck out three times. “He was on tonight. [If] we got a mistake, we really didn’t do any damage on it. We either fouled it off or we missed it, and it’s tough. You’re going to run into some guys like that.”

Vasquez was solid until the fifth, keeping the Padres off-kilter behind a disappearing curveball and deceptive cutter. He threw his cutter 29 times, resulting in only two balls put in play, but one of those balls spelled disaster: With one on and two outs in the fifth, Vasquez got too much of the plate and Soto hit a no-doubter to right to give the Padres a 2-0 lead.

Vaquez allowed two runs, four hits, three walks and two hit batsmen in 4 2⁄3 innings.

“It’s a really, really great feeling,” Vasquez said through an interpreter. “Warming up and getting ready for the start, I took a moment and looked around and you could see how majestic Yankee Stadium is. So many thoughts came into my mind in that moment, and I just thank God for this opportunity, and my family helped me so much along the way to get here.”

The Padres got two more runs with two outs in the sixth when Ron Marinaccio walked Austin Nola and served up a knee-high changeup to Tatis, who obliterated it. The 439-foot shot to leftfield went off his bat at 113.4 mph, and Tatis — who was dinged with a PED suspension last year and spent the first inning being peppered with chants of “steroids” and “cheater” — gave as good as he got, hopping up in the air in celebration as he crossed third.

The Yankees finally got one back in the bottom of the sixth. Gleyber Torres singled, moved to third on Judge’s double and scored on Rizzo’s grounder to first to make it 4-1. Musgrove allowed one run, six hits and no walks with six strikeouts in 6 1⁄3 innings.

As for Boone, he’ll be back at it Saturday after getting slapped with the one-game suspension for “recent conduct toward Major League Umpires,” according to an announcement by MLB on Friday. He also was fined an undisclosed amount. Boone had been ejected three times in an 11-day span, including Thursday, and led the majors last year with nine ejections. He has a major league-high four ejections this year and 30 in five-plus seasons as a manager.

“I don’t like that it’s happened a few times this week,” he said. “I’d like to not get ejected. Hopefully I could start a long streak of not getting ejected. I’m not necessarily afraid to but no, it’s not my intent to get ejected. I don’t want to and hopefully I won’t for a while.”

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.