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Welp. Last night was more of the same for the suddenly-helpless Yankees, who closed out June with their sixth loss in a row — appropriately their longest skid since … last June. The Aaron Boone Era Yankees are nothing if not consistent in their frustrating patterns.

For last night in particular, nothing went right. Their ace got bombed, they weren’t crisp in the field, and their offense was held to two hits until the ninth. It ain’t swell around these parts.

There’s plenty of pressure to go around, but who do you think bears the most right now? Ben Rice is a candidate, as until a solo shot yesterday, the likely All-Star had been very quiet with the bat in the past week and change. Could he be feeling the heat to keep up his torrid production from the first few months, given the wider struggles of the offense of late? Might it be Cody Bellinger, a likely fellow All-Star who has cooled off as well and carries a big contract that comes with responsibilities, particularly with Aaron Judge out? Or maybe it’s someone else, like impending free agent Jazz Chisholm Jr., one of the starting pitchers trying to keep the opponent at bay, or the bleakly anemic Austin Wells. There’s no shortage of options, unfortunately.

Today on the site, it’s a rapid-fire schedule before the matinee this afternoon. Peter will run our monthly GM poll, Madison will tackle the Rivalry Roundup, John remember the extremely mysterious Jack Quinn for our Yankees Birthday series, and then he and Kento will do the monthly check-ins on the AL Central and AL West, respectively.

Today’s Matchup*

New York Yankees vs. Detroit Tigers

Time: 1:35 p.m. EST

TV: YES, Detroit SportsNet

Venue: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY

*This is not the matchup, and feel free to ignore me if you don’t care about the World Cup. But the soccer fan in me is compelled to mention that Team USA faces Bosnia and Herzegovina in Santa Clara, CA tonight on Fox. Check it out and see if the USMNT win a game in the knockout round for the first time in 24 years!

MLB.com | Bryan Hoch: After almost a month of uncertainty, the Yankees have finally provided a return timetable. Judge indicated that he is targeting an August return, but first has to undergo follow-up imaging in a couple weeks. Judge last played on May 31st and was diagnosed with a fractured first right rib on June 4th, the team then only setting a four-to-six week timetable for re-imaging, but no indication of a return to play. The captain has not been doing any baseball activities but has gotten in lower body weight training. Hopefully the upcoming imaging reveals healing and a potential ramp-up in rehab given the way the Yankees offense has slumped in the second half of his absence.

AP News | Larry Fleisher: Max Fried faced live hitters for the first time since suffering a bone bruise in his pitching elbow. He threw 30 pitches in a 20-minute, two-inning simulated game at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. Fried faced fellow IL inhabitants Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon and tallied a pair of strikeouts while throwing all the pitches in his arsenal. Fried was among the AL’s best starters at the time of his injury on May 13th against the Orioles (departing that game after three innings with his velocity noticeably down), pitching to a 3.21 ERA in his first 10 starts. The 32-year-old lefty’s return will be a huge boon to a rotation that regressed significantly in June.

Also contained within are injury updates on a trio of Yankees position players. Grisham and McMahon are both expected to be activated from the IL on Friday, Grisham out since June 12th with a strained right hamstring and McMahon absent since June 21st with a throat infection. Grisham would be a significant reinforcement to their struggling offense while McMahon would shore up what has been a defensive train wreck at third in his absence. Finally, we received confirmation that Jazz Chisholm Jr. has cleared concussion protocol and was available off the bench in their loss to the Tigers on Tuesday, Jazz departing Monday’s game in the fourth after colliding with Jasson Domínguez’s elbow on a shallow fly ball.

New York Post | Jake Nisse ($): Yovanny Cruz was called up on Tuesday to reinforce the bullpen as the corresponding move for Yerry De los Santos’ optioning to Triple-A. Cruz flashed tantalizing stuff in his two game cup of coffee in May, striking out three in 2.1 scoreless innings with a fastball that touches triple digits and a wipeout slider. However, the Yankees have opted to keep him in Triple-A to work on his strike throwing, and indeed his walk rate improved from 12.2-percent to 7.1-percent with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre since getting sent back down at the end of last month.

Cruz got into last night’s blowout at the hands of the Tigers and threw two scoreless innings, striking out three.

Aaron Judge is “starting to feel better,” Aaron Boone said, though that feeling has not yet translated into concrete progress toward a return.

Thursday will mark four weeks since the Yankees announced their captain had suffered a stress fracture of a rib and would undergo additional medical imaging in “approximately four to six weeks.”

He will not be reexamined on the shortest end of the given spectrum, Boone saying Tuesday that Judge is weeks away from a scan that would check for healing.

But in his dealings with Judge, Boone said the feedback has improved.

“He was uncomfortable there for a while,” the Yankees manager said before his team’s 9-3 blowout loss to the Tigers on Tuesday at the Stadium, their sixth consecutive defeat. “It seems like the normal stuff is starting to feel better, so hopefully that’s a good sign of hopefully some healing.”

Judge believed he suffered the stress fracture during a dive in Houston on April 26, and he struggled for weeks trying to play through it before opting for tests in early June.

Since then, the best hitter in baseball has not been “able to do much,” Boone said, “and certainly not able to do any baseball activities.” Judge has been able to work out in the weight room and strengthen his lower body.

Any return timetable remains elusive.

“It does seem like this week he is starting to feel better, which is encouraging,” Boone said.

After crashing into Jasson Domínguez a day prior, Jazz Chisholm Jr. said he felt better and believed he would be available off the bench, though Boone said the second baseman only would be used in an emergency.

Chisholm believed he would be cleared from the concussion protocol. Boone said he didn’t know whether Chisholm would play Wednesday, and José Caballero started at second base Tuesday.

Chisholm left Monday’s loss in the fourth inning after he chased a shallow fly ball and was clotheslined by Domínguez, who made the catch.

“Felt like I got punched in the face,” Chisholm said.

Cody Bellinger, who had played in 83 of the first 84 games this season, sat for a second time amid a deep slump.

In his previous 12 games, Bellinger had gone 5-for-41 (.122) with a .396 OPS.

“He’ll get corrected and get it going here,” Boone said. “Hopefully giving him at least the start off tonight kind of lets him take a step back for a second and hopefully get it going.”

Call-up Yovanny Cruz pitched two perfect innings with three strikeouts.

He threw five pitches above 100 mph and maxed out at 101.5 mph.

Against lefty Tarik Skubal, Max Schuemann started in left field, Spencer Jones in center and Domínguez in right.

TORONTO — Clay Holmes is progressing to a mound in his rehab, but still weeks away from rejoining the Mets.

The right-hander will throw a bullpen session this week, according to interim manager Andy Green, in his rehab from a broken right fibula.

“I would love to say he’s ahead of schedule, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself and make that declaration,” Green said before the Mets beat the Blue Jays 3-0 on Tuesday at Rogers Centre. “But it’s going well and we’re encouraged by that.”

Holmes, who can opt out of his contract after this season, is among the pitchers the Mets could like to deal before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.

Holmes was the Mets’ most effective starter before his injury, pitching to a 2.39 ERA in eight starts.

Luis Robert Jr. began a minor league rehab assignment with Triple-A Syracuse, where he joined rehabbing Jorge Polanco.

Green was asked what the Mets lineup could become with Robert and Polanco as options. Both players have been sidelined since April.

“In Robert’s case it’s a right-handed bat that we have missed pretty obviously against left-handed pitching,” Green said. “It would be great to have Polanco — he really rounds out a lineup with an ability to hit from both sides, so the lineup gets lengthened.

“I think some of the at-bats we have had late in games, when you have those guys you have more options, even if they are on the bench on a given day you have got more choices that work really well and I think it’s just a longer, more diverse lineup.”

Though A.J. Ewing has taken grounders, Green downplayed the idea the rookie could shift to the infield following Robert’s return.

“You are talking about somebody adjusting to the big leagues and being locked in out in center field right now, which is where he’s been,” Green said.

The Mets signed outfielder Christopher Morel to a minor league contract, according to an industry source.

Morel, 27, had a .425 OPS in 22 games with the Marlins this season.

Cam Schlittler’s night started off badly, and it quickly got even worse.

The Yankees ace coughed up three home runs in a nightmare first inning, and another in the third, as he was ultimately charged with six earned runs and put his team in a hole against Detroit’s reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal.

The hole he dug was too deep for a team with a struggling offense, resulting in a 9-3 loss.

“It’s my job to come in here and try and stop that bleeding, and I couldn’t get that done,” Schlittler said as the Yankees slumped to a sixth consecutive defeat and nearly had a franchise record fifth straight game with three or fewer hits before a pair of ninth-inning singles spared them that infamy.

“So [to] put the team down four [runs] in the first — it’s not encouraging, especially against a guy like that [Skubal].”

Schlittler retired the first two batters he faced but saw an attempted home run robbery by Spencer Jones on Kerry Carpenter bounce off the outfielder’s glove and over the center field wall.

From there, Schlittler unraveled, even if manager Aaron Boone later insisted there was no mental letdown from the slightly unlucky start.

Homers by Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson followed despite Schlittler getting them both to two strikes, and the normally steady arm looked deflated after finally getting out of the inning.

He was taken deep again by Greene in the third inning and was finally removed from the firing line in the fifth after a double off the center field wall by Dillon Dingler.

“If he’s not good with his location, he doesn’t usually necessarily pay like that,” Boone said, as he also credited Torkelson for battling during a long at-bat prior to his bomb. “Confident that with Cam, he’ll grow from this, and this will be something that kind of fuels him and allows him to see where he can make adjustments, too, moving forward.”

The 25-year-old has admittedly fared slightly worse against lefties this season (which Carpenter and Greene both are), but this blowup was plain uncharacteristic for Schlittler, who has generally been dominant dating back to his days in college and in the minors.

That success has translated to the majors, where he still has a 2.08 ERA this year even after Tuesday’s blip.

Schlittler was unsurprisingly critical of his performance but found a positive spin — he established his curveball in his second time through the Tigers’ order.

“It’s taken a while to experience an outing like that,” he said. “So I just got to take what I can from it and get ready for next week.”

✅ Cleveland Guardians score runs in just 1 of 9 innings
✅ Tanner Bibee gives up the exact number of earned runs he leads by
✅ Bibee gets ridiculous and completely undeserved Loss
✅ Shawn Armstrong enters and allows home run

It was another infuriating game of baseball for Guardians fans to watch last night. 2 runs for Grant Fink’s offense. Both in the 1st inning. Bibee gave them back in the third. Cooper Ingle blew the lead in the 7th by not knowing how many outs there were. And Armstrong gave up the dinger in the 8th.

On the bright side, Chase DeLauter looked awesome against Jacob deGrom.

And Braylon Doughty got promoted to AA. My favorite pitching prospect since Biebs.

How bad is that Guardians offense?

• The pitcher who shut them down on Monday night, Chris Paddack, was immediately DFA’d after he completed the only task Texas signed him for. They know Paddack sucks—he has an ERA near 10 against the rest of baseball—but he consistently dominates Cleveland because Grant Fink’s offense never adjusts to anything.

I expect another team to employ this same strategy before the season ends. Could the White Sox do it this weekend?

Baseball great and former Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez weighed in on the current state of affairs of the Amazins’, who have been in a free fall this season even after grabbing a 3-0 win on Tuesday over the Blue Jays on Tuesday night in Toronto. 

While the Hall of Fame hurler was optimistic the Mets still could turn their season around, he said the biggest issue for his former ballclub was that it lacks any sort of identity. He also believes there’s no leadership among the group. 

The Mets’ ugly season cost manager Carlos Mendoza last week, and the team has had a number of embarrassing moments, which included giving up a Little League home run to George Springer on Monday. 

“The Mets lack personality, they lack identity, they lack leadership. The Mets must find their identity,” Martinez said on TNT on Tuesday. “It gets me mad, because when I was there from 05 to 08…our team was recognized by probably unity, and that’s what made us be successful. We did not achieve our goal, which was to win the World Series, but we were pretty good.

“We were giving the Philadelphia Phillies and the Atlanta Braves a lot to think about every time we took the mound, whether we were hurt — a little bit hurt — or a little banged up, but we were all together, and we played together.” 

Martinez’s tenure with the Mets produced just one playoff appearance, which was the team’s run to the NLCS in 2006. 

The Mets famously lost to the Cardinals in seven games in the NLCS and fell out of the playoff race on the final day in each of the next two seasons after squandering division leads. 

“We were going at it in the best way possible,” Martinez continued. “You don’t see that with the Mets. It’s like everybody’s playing their own game on their own. They need to be together in order for them to be successful. Everybody can achieve a little bit, anybody can give a little bit of something positive for the next guy coming up.”

The baseball great did add that the Mets have the talent that should make them a competitive team, but again pointed to the need for accountability. 

“They need to find their own identity, and they need to be accountable and responsible for the money they’re being paid,” he added.

Like a rollercoaster built by a particularly unimaginative person, tonight’s Mariners game was slow and boring for the first two-thirds, then suddenly rocketed into being fun late. By the time it was over the score was 8-3 and the Mariners offense had somehow not only blown past their former three-run-per-game cap (Rest in Pieces, hopefully never to be seen again), but managed to score all those runs without a homer for the first time in four years. For a team that’s built on on-base and slug, tonight was a lot of death by papercuts inflicted on the Angels bullpen, appropriately ending what’s been a weird June in a weird way – and yet also not, because with this win the Mariners end June at 13-14 for the month, the exact same way they ended June of 2025. Could this boring back-loaded rollercoaster metaphor bear out over the whole season? Reader, we shall see.

Bryan Woo turned in another solid start in what’s been a fairly uneven season for him so far, bobbing and weaving through some bad-luck BABIP hits and fielding miscues behind him; he didn’t have to deal with more than one baserunner until the fifth, when perpetual thorn in Mariners side Jo Adell reached on a throwing error from Colt Emerson and then Woo , maybe shaken, walked his next hitter, Josh Lowe, who is currently running a robust 4% walk rate. Woo rebounded to get out of trouble, getting three straight weakly-hit outs, and then roared through the sixth with a quick 1-2-3 inning against the top of the Angels lineup.

But the Mariners offense limped through those first five innings, tonight missing both Luke Raley and Dominic Canzone, both getting in an extra day of rest before tomorrow’s off-day. The Mariners couldn’t get anything going off Jose Soriano, putting him in a time machine and transporting him back to his early dominant days of the 2026 season despite some wandering command. Soriano struck out nine Mariners over five innings, as they chased after both cutters up and curveballs down, scattering just three hits across the first five frames.

The Mariners finally broke the deadlock in the sixth, finally stringing together some hits against Soriano, and we’re saying finally twice (thrice!) because that’s how finally it felt. Julio Rodríguez, leading off the inning, jumped on the first pitch he saw, a slider, for a single. Josh Naylor then worked a slightly longer at-bat before getting a fastball he could dump up the middle for a single of his own. The Mariners got their first run of the day – and the first run of the game – on a third consecutive single from Randy Arozarena, who took Soriano’s splitter and scorched it into left field, bringing in Julio from second easily.

That * explosion of offense * caused Angels manager Kurt Suzuki (curséd sentence) to call upon Chase Silseth, who sounds like if a Star Wars character went to a fancy boarding school, to face Cal Raleigh. It’s been a struggle for the Big Dumper, and while we would have loved to see a refreshing rainmaking Dump in the form of a home run, Cal’s smug face here on an overturned strike three that flipped to a walk – a challenge that risked what would have been the Mariners’ last challenge of the day after an ill-considered challenge by Naylor in the first – is pretty sweet succor.

Cole Young was the hero of last night’s game with his two-homer effort and he continued to produce at the plate today, smoking a splitter from Silseth (say that three times fast) at 101 mph into right field, bringing in Naylor from third. A wild pitch brought home another run and suddenly the Mariners had hit their three-run cap. After the next two batters made outs – Colt Emerson struck out on a borderline pitch challenged by Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe, and Victor Robles struck out on seven pitches, nary a one of which approached the plate – it seemed like that’s where the inning, and possibly the run-scoring, would grind to a halt, with Weston Wilson – owner of two strikeouts already on the day – due up. But Wilson got a sinker on the plate and was able to just knock it over the head of a leaping Nolan Schanuel to bring in another pair of runs.

It’s a good thing the Mariners did add on, because the Angels did their own version of breaking the game open in the seventh after Bryan Woo exited the game with one out, having given up another bad-luck leadoff single on a changeup to Wade Meckler and, a batter later, losing a nine-pitch battle to pesky Josh Lowe that ended in a single on the slider.

Eduard Bazardo was called upon to stop the bleeding and he did not, giving up an RBI single to the first batter he saw, Logan O’Hoppe, on a poorly-located sinker. Bazardo then worsened the situation by walking nine-hole hitter and former Mariner Donovan Walton, bringing up Zach Neto, who tattooed a sinker right back up the middle for a two-RBI single, drawing the game to 5-3. Sinkers? More like stinkers on this part of the rollercoaster (bad, pejorative, creaky).

Things could have gotten worse from there, as Vaughn Grissom dunked a pitch shallowly into right field that Weston/Wilson – who has played some outfield but almost exclusively in left field – couldn’t quite get to, diving but having the ball pop out of his glove. WesWil smartly came up firing, though, and was able to get the ball in for a force on Neto, caught between second and third as Walton remained at second, having to hold up to see if the ball was caught. Bazardo was able to get Schanuel to fly out harmlessly to end the inning, but things were considerably tighter than they had been, with just two runs left to ensure that another strong start from a Mariners starter wouldn’t be squandered.

However, here’s where the rollercoaster (fun, complimentary, whoo-hoo-hands) gets cranking again. The Mariners were able to open up the lead again the seventh against veteran lefty Brent Suter. Julio led off with a hard-struck single up the middle, moving to third on a one-out double by Arozarena. But Cal had a tough at-bat against Suter, going down on three pitches for the second out, putting the onus on the two young lefties at the bottom of the lineup – Cole and Colt, whose ages combined are a mere six years older than Suter. Cole started off by working an excellent ten-pitch plate appearance culminating in a walk, fouling off pitch after pitch and refusing to expand against the veteran. Hooray for Cole. Then Colt, not to be outdone, parachuted a little fly-ball single on the first pitch he saw into left field for another two runs of insurance.

It was a particularly nice moment for Emerson, who struggled yesterday, going 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. But Emerson immediately gave all the credit to his teammate Young for working a long at-bat and forcing Suter to show his hand.

“Cole Young having the 10-pitch at-bat against Suter – that’s a really great pitcher, and seeing him do that gave me all the confidence in the world to go up there and be myself,” Emerson said. “Kind of saw everything Suter had to throw at that point – Cole got multiple changeups, you know no one practices lefty-lefty changeups, so seeing that fitght was just outstanding. I’m so happy for him.”

With a five-run lead, Dan Wilson opted to give Michael Rucker a chance at redemption against the middle part of the Angels order. Rucker walked the first hitter he saw, Jorge Soler, and then fell behind his next hitter 1-0, but was able to get Meckler to ground into a double play on the second pitch, a well-located four-seamer at the top of the zone, and then got another ground ball out off the bat of Adell for a scoreless inning. Andrés Muñoz, in to get a little work before the off-day, shut the door in the ninth with authority, and that was that. A solid team win, and they didn’t even have to homer about it. Now the calendar flips to July, and the All-Star Break, and hopefully some hotter Mariners hitting to go with the warmer temperatures.