Yankees' rally falls short in series opener to Reds, Aaron Judge hits 32nd homer
Luis Gil of the Yankees looks on against the Reds during the fourth inning at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. Credit: Getty Images/Luke Hales
Whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, there were always going to be days like these: Players get hurt, streaks go cold, and things stop breaking in your favor. And right now for the Yankees, the name of the game is gritting your way through it and hoping the cushion they built in the first half of this season is enough to see them through.
“The preparation, the focus, the confidence have been there,” Aaron Boone said Tuesday before the Yankees’ 5-4 loss to the Reds at the Stadium. “We’ve taken a couple hits on the injury front, but I feel like the frame of mind and the focus is where it needs to be and I’m confident we can get this thing going.”
And they almost — almost — managed it.
Luis Gil turned in his third straight rough performance, but the Yankees scored three runs in the sixth and one in the seventh to draw within 5-4.
But they went down in order in the eighth and ninth (leaving Juan Soto in the on-deck circle) as the Yankees suffered their 11th loss in 15 games.
Gil (9-4, 3.41 ERA) allowed four earned runs, two hits, three walks and three strikeouts over four-plus innings. He hit two batters.
Aaron Judge, meanwhile, continued his torrid streak — hitting his MLB-leading 32nd homer in the seventh, a solo shot that got the Yankees within a run. The Yankees trailed 5-0 through five innings, but made it 5-3 in the sixth behind Gleyber Torres’ RBI single and Ben Rice’s two-run double.
Judge leads all triple crown categories among qualified hitters. “What he’s doing is — you know, I don’t know,” Aaron Boone said. “I’m going to get into the thesaurus because I’ve used all the other words I can think of.”
But while all that is well and good, there’s no doubt that Gil’s recent struggles are concerning. Tuesday was a mild improvement after back-to-back tough starts against the Orioles and Mets, but he still labored with making in-game corrections to his mechanics. Prior to these three games, the rookie was 9-1 with a 2.03 ERA. He has a 14.90 ERA over his last three starts.
“The first three innings, I felt pretty good but later in the fourth, I came in and my delivery wasn’t like I wanted it,” Gil said through an interpreter. “Sometimes you hit bumps when you’re competing at this level but at the same time, I feel assured of myself that, working hard, I’ll be able to get out of it and not let things like that keep happening.”
In the fourth, Elly De La Cruz, the fourth-fasted player in the sport, according to Baseball Savant, put that speed to good use, getting around on Gil’s 95.4-mph fastball and poking it to the corner in right for a leadoff triple. One pitch later, he scored — coming home on Jeimer Candelario’s groundout to give the Reds a 1-0 lead.
The Reds tacked on plenty more in the fifth, as Gil again began struggling with his control. The righthander plunked Stuart Fairchild to lead off the inning and then grooved an 0-and-1 fastball that Will Benson hammered 412 feet to straightaway center for his ninth homer of the year. Gil then hit the next batter, Jonathan India, to end his night in favor of Caleb Ferguson. That, though, didn’t turn out to be much of an improvement, as De La Cruz blasted Ferguson’s 0-and-2 knee-high fastball 425 feet to left to make it 5-0.
Gil has never thrown more than 108 2⁄3 innings in a professional season and is now up to 89 2⁄3 innings a little past the season's halfway point, though Boone previously said he didn’t believe the pitcher’s struggles to be fatigue-related (though it’s something the team will continue to monitor). More than anything, there’s been an inconsistency in his delivery and release, Boone said.
“You’ve got to consider everything [but] I don’t think this is a fatigue issue,” Boone said. “I think it’s a little out of sorts issue and him having a harder time correcting on the fly . . . He’s having a hard time self-correcting when he gets a little out of whack and then the mechanics seem to get a little bit [off]. I think overall, the profiles were better tonight but still work to do.”
Graham Ashcraft (5-4, 5.45) allowed three runs and four hits over five innings, with two walks and three strikeouts.
Down 5-3 in the seventh, Judge cut that deficit in half, blasting Sam Moll’s first-pitch sinker to the stands in left for his MLB-leading 83rd RBI at just past the halfway point of the season. He’s also hitting an MLB-best .321.
"I mean, obviously, you know about the power,” Rice said of Judge, “but he’s a hitter … To do that with that kind of power is really, really impressive. He knows what he wants to do at the plate. He always has a plan.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.