Good news, bad news for Yankees: Juan Soto injury not serious, but star wasn't available in 11-inning loss to Dodgers
Yankees’ Juan Soto looks on from the dugout during an MLB baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Yankee Stadium on Friday, June 7, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
These days, even when things go wrong for the Yankees, they still go right.
That’s the only conclusion to draw from what Aaron Boone called “good news” about Juan Soto’s sore left forearm.
Tests showed it’s just inflammation. So even though Soto was out of the lineup for the first time as a Yankee on Friday night against the Dodgers, Boone didn’t completely rule out a pinch-hitting appearance by the star slugger.
In the late innings, Soto loomed in the dugout holding a bat, and the crowd at times chanted “We want Soto!”
But it turned out to be a decoy. Soto didn’t get into the Yankees’ 2-1, 11-inning loss to the Dodgers before a sellout crowd — the largest of the season — of 48,048 at Yankee Stadium.
“Nah,” Boone said after the game of using Soto. “Not today.”
The tight, taut game went into the 11th scoreless before Teoscar Hernandez gave the Dodgers the lead with a two-run double off Ian Hamilton.
Aaron Judge’s one-out RBI single in the bottom half made it 2-1. But former Mets righthander Yohan Ramirez struck out Giancarlo Stanton and got Anthony Rizzo to foul out to catcher Will Smith as the Dodgers snapped the Yankees’ winning streak at eight games.
“It was a great ballgame,” Boone said.
The Soto injury news ended an approximately 18-hour period between Soto not returning to rightfield after a rain delay on Thursday night and Boone opening his pregame news conference on Friday with the magical words Yankees fans had been waiting to hear.
“Inflammation,” Boone said. “So good news, obviously.”
Soto said of the test results: “Thank God it came out that way.”
Boone admitted “there might have been some anxious moments in there” and recalled last September when super-hot prospect Jasson Dominguez reported to work with a sore elbow and ended up needing Tommy John surgery.
Early-arriving fans at Yankee Stadium might have thought Soto was OK enough to take batting practice because of all the “22” Yankees jerseys on the field at that time. But it was just the many Yankees players still wearing the Soto basketball jerseys that were given away to fans on Wednesday.
With the Soto injury fears mostly quelled, Friday became about what MLB wanted it to be about: the Dodgers’ talented Japanese stars (Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani) against the Yankees’ stars.
The atmosphere for the Dodgers’ first Bronx visit since 2016 was electric, with Los Angeles fans in Ohtani “17’’ jerseys mixing with Yankees fans in a bicoastal interleague melange.
Chants of “Let’s go Dodgers!” were heard before they were drowned out by boos and the clever retort “Let’s go Yankees!”
Yamamoto did not pitch when the Dodgers visited Citi Field in April. He spurned both the Mets and Yankees this past offseason to join Ohtani in Los Angeles for 12 years and $325 million.
Mets fans didn’t get a chance to howl at Yamamoto, but Yankees fans gave him the business during pregame introductions (and also booed Ohtani during his at-bats).
Of course, it’s not as if the Yankees need Yamamoto, who was brilliant, striking out seven in seven innings, allowing two hits and two walks and lowering his rookie-season ERA to 3.00.
If Yamamoto had decided to take the Yankees’ millions, they might not have had room in the rotation for AL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Award candidate Luis Gil, 26, who will bring his sparkling 1.82 ERA into Sunday night’s start.
So even though the Yankees lost out on Yamamoto, they picked up a huge “W’’ in Gil.
Starting for the Yankees against Yamamoto was Cody Poteet, a 29-year-old righthander who might have been the most anonymous player on either star-studded roster. Poteet’s one-year, $750,000 contract is 11 years fewer and $324,250,000 less than Yamamoto’s deal.
Poteet can’t match Yamamoto dollar for dollar, but he matched him zero for zero for 4 2⁄3 innings.
Boone said the Yankees are well-equipped to weather Soto’s absence because they are “way better” offensively than in their run-starved 2023 campaign. But they went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position and scored only with the aid of the automatic runner in the 11th.
It’s just one game. But Yankees fans will feel “way better” once Soto picks up a bat again for real.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
