Monday night’s game against the Angels had a chance to be the most demoralizing loss of the Yankees’ season, even amid a five-game losing streak that included getting one-hit by the A’s and a 17-inning stretch where they failed to score. The offense had rightly come under fire for failing to uphold their end of the bargain as more than half the lineup languished below the Mendoza Line. You can therefore imagine the anxiety produced by the bats finally coming alive in the series opener against the Angels, only for the pitching staff to squander three separate leads.
It was admittedly difficult to muster even a mote of optimism after Mike Trout hit the second of his lead-altering home runs, leaving the Yankees in a two-run deficit heading into the ninth — Aaron Judge and his pair of home runs not due to bat again barring a lengthy rally. However, Jazz Chisholm Jr. led off with a single against closer Jordan Romano to offer the slightest glimmer of hope, bringing Trent Grisham to the plate as the possible tying run, the struggling center fielder having already impacted the game with a pinch-hit, three-run blast in the fifth.
Romano has been a two-pitch pitcher for the last four years, throwing the four-seamer and slider in roughly equal proportions, and he starts this AB with the heater.
The pitch is over the plate, but sails a bit on Romano to land above the strike zone. Centrally-located, elevated four-seamers are tough pitches to lay off for the hitter because of how well you see the ball out of the hand, but Grisham doesn’t even flinch as he watches it into the catcher’s glove for ball one.
Romano sticks with the fastball given that the previous pitch didn’t miss by all that much.
This one’s also decently close to the zone, about knee-high but a half a foot off the plate away. Once again, there’s not even a twitch out of Grisham as he takes it for ball two. It’s pretty clear between his previous two AB’s and these first two pitches that Grisham is seeing the ball well.
After watching Grisham spit on the last two fastballs, Romano tries to steal a strike with the backdoor slider to get back into the count.
He misses his spot, but it’s still a decent pitch, landing just an inch or two below the zone for a ball. It’s actually a hell of a take by Grisham, the pitch in the zone right up until the last five feet before home plate when it’s downward break tilts it below the bottom edge of the zone. Somehow, Grisham is still able to identify this as a ball almost immediately out of Romano’s hand, despite how long it looked like a strike.
Behind in the count 3-0, Romano has to throw a heater down the pipe to avoid putting the tying run on base with no outs.
Pretty straightforward here: no reason to give the green light and risk a double play ball — Grisham is taking all the way knowing he still has the count leverage fully in his favor if it gets to 3-1.
Interestingly, Romano doesn’t give in with the count 3-1 and throw another heater in the zone. He tries to throw a chase slider below the zone hoping for a whiff or, better yet, for Grisham to roll over a weak grounder.
Instead, he leaves this breaking ball right in a lefty’s wheelhouse down and in, and Grisham does not miss. It’s awesome to see his mechanics and approach in this situation. He gets his front foot down early in case it’s a heater. However, he holds that front hip square and keeps his weight back, allowing him to be right on time to the off-speed while still maintaining a solid base to drive it with power. This tells me that Grisham is almost sitting on a mistake slider in the zone in this situation, which demonstrates excellent knowledge of his opponent. He barrels the ball to right for his second home run and fifth RBI of the night to truly ignite the game-winning rally.
Here’s the full AB:
Speaking to the media prior to the start of this series, Judge called out the offense as a whole for pressing and trying to play hero. He implored his teammates to simplify their approaches — hunt a pitch in a particular zone and pass the baton to the next hitter if that pitch does not come. Grisham’s approach in this AB exemplified his captain’s commands. Knowing Romano’s propensity to be wild both in and out of the zone, it looks to me that Grisham is waiting for Romano to make a mistake with the slider in the zone. He disregards all the other pitches that don’t match the criteria of what he is hunting before ambushing the slider that he knows he can do damage on, and boy did he come up clutch after starting the game on the bench. His home run leveled the scores at ten apiece, setting up José Caballero’s double, steal of third, and scamper home on a walk-off wild pitch by Romano in this early contender for game of the year.
Grisham was such an important piece for the Yankees last season, his revamped approach underlining the front office’s decision to bring him back on the qualifying offer. He’s still the same remade ballplayer in 2026, placing in the 94th percentile or better in hard-hit rate, chase rate, walk rate, and squared-up rate. The results obviously weren’t there the first two weeks of the season, but the process remained sound and had to bear fruit eventually. This performance is hopefully just the shot in the arm needed to restore confidence and kickstart what I feel can be just as productive a season as 2025.
