The two starting pitchers entered this game trending in opposite directions. Gerrit Cole had just allowed the most home runs (seven) in a two-start span in his career, while Eduardo Rodriguez is in the midst of a career year with a 2.62 ERA. One of those trends remained — Cole giving up another home run on a fastball — but fortunately the other trend was momentarily halted, the Yankees scoring five in the first off E-Rod to give themselves enough of a cushion to weather Cole’s continued home run woes.
Cole settled down after the Carroll dinger to give the Yankees six innings, by which time the offense all but put this game out of reach. They kept the pressure on, scoring a further four runs including solo home runs by Ben Rice and George Lombard Jr., to cruise to a series-opening victory in the desert, 9-2.
Rodriguez came into this game with an ERA above six in the first inning and an ERA right around two for the subsequent innings combined. That made it imperative that the Yankees find a way to do damage before the home team had a chance to come to bat, especially with the rate Cole is giving up the long ball. They did just that with a clear disciplined approach not to expand the zone against E-Rod’s curveball.
Paul Goldschmidt drew a leadoff walk, Cody Bellinger followed with a single, and Heliot Ramos also walked to load the bases with no outs. Rice drew the Yankees’ third walk in the first four batters to plate Goldschmidt and open the scoring, Goldy, Ramos, and Rice all working full counts before taking the free pass. Amed Rosario then fought off a cutter that handcuffed him up and in, muscling it to the opposite field perfectly between center and left fielder to plate Bellinger as the runners went station to station. A wild pitch allowed Ramos to score and Rice and Rosario to move up to second and third. This set up a two-run ground ball single from Lombard that just got by Geraldo Perdomo’s diving attempt to atone for his defensive misplay in the 13th that allowed the Twins to walk off the Yankees on Wednesday.
Rodriguez struck out Volpe to end the inning giving him three strikeouts in the frame, but the damage was done. The 45 pitches he threw were the most he’s thrown in the first inning in his career. 33 of those pitches fell out of the zone, but only eight induced a chase.
It’s a good thing they hung such a crooked number, because Cole immediately gave two of those runs back. He gave up a leadoff single to Perdomo before yanking an 0-1 four-seamer right into Corbin Carroll’s nitro zone, the three-time All-Star obliterating it to right for a two-run bomb to reduce the Yankees’ lead, 5-2. Rice made sure to immediately tilt the momentum back in his team’s favor. After falling behind 0-2, he stayed back on an elevated heater from E-Rod riding it out the other way and over the fence in left-center for a leadoff bomb, his 39th of the year, to give Cole some more of his cushion back, 6-2.
Cole settled down to work a scoreless third and fourth, helped in part by a sharp uptick in slider usage at the expense of some four-seamers as well as an impressive sliding catch in left-center by Spencer Jones in the third. He finally began dialing the fastball command to the corners in the fifth, striking out Tim Tawa and Lars Nootbaar on four-seamers to end the frame after Jesús Sánchez singled with one out. This allowed Lombard to restore the Yankees’ five run lead in the sixth, the rookie punishing a hanging curveball from E-Rod by lining the solo shot down the line it left and into the bullpen for his fourth of the year and third RBI on the night.
The four-seamer was the prime culprit for Cole in his previous two starts with a 68.2-percent hard-hit rate and just six whiffs, and that remained the case tonight. However, I believe it is Cole’s rustiness with his secondaries that is leading his four-seamer to get barreled. The fastball still has plenty of velocity — at 97 mph it’s a full tick above last season. I will grant that he has missed location in the zone on numerous occasions which hasn’t done him any favors.
However, after his last start, Cole identified a lack of chase and whiff against his secondaries as the reason his fastball is getting crushed. Hitters being able to lay off those chase pitches forces Cole to overuse the fastball in counts that favor the softer stuff, which in essence gives them the opportunity to hunt the heater when they should be defending against the breaker. When you can hunt a fastball in any count, chances are you are going to do damage when Cole misses his spot in the zone, the high velocity not much of a weapon when hitters’ bats are preemptively sped up.
Indeed, once he started commanding his slider and knuckle curve to the shadow of the zone in the middle innings, the hard contact against the fastball dried up. Having pitched a strong fifth and sixth and with his pitch count at 90, Boone saw no reason to overextend Cole and ended his night after six with his best innings freshest in mind. He finished night having pitched six innings, allowing two runs on four hits with no walks and six strikeouts.
Despite possessing one of the stingiest bullpens in baseball, the Diamondbacks decided that a five-run deficit in the seventh was too steep to justify using their high leverage arms. So, Zac Gallen made his first career relief appearance, the former All-Star in the midst of am injury-plagued, below-replacement-level campaign. He allowed a leadoff single to Goldschmidt and walked Ramos and Rice — again, both in full counts — to load the bases with one out. Aaron Boone sent out Ryan McMahon to pinch-hit for Rosario, and he hit a sharp grounder to first that Pavin Smith gloved but airmailed the underhand toss to Gallen covering first as all the runners were safe and a run scored on the error. Spencer Jones then appeared to ground into the inning-ending double play, but his hustle out of the box and down the line just beat the throw to pick up an RBI and make it 9-2.
Ryan Yarbrough pitched 1.1 innings in relief of Cole and worked himself into and out of trouble in the seventh. Arizona put runners on second and third as Nolan Arenado singled and Carroll doubled with one out. However, Yarbrough struck out Jose Fernandez and Tawa to strand the pair in scoring position. Rice smoked his fourth triple of the year in the ninth but was stranded at third by a McMahon strikeout. Michael Fulmer and Luis Gil recorded the final five outs of the game without allowing a baserunner to seal the win, 9-2. With the Rays having lost to the Red Sox earlier in the evening, the Yankees’ deficit is back to four games in the division, making that looming four-game set against Tampa in the Bronx even more high stakes.
Cam Schlittler looks to cement his AL Cy Young case tomorrow after Dylan Cease suffered his shortest start of the season on Friday. The Yankees ace will face off against Brandon Pfaadt with a slightly more reasonable game start time. First pitch is scheduled for 8:10 pm ET with the broadcast remaining on YES.
