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Just one week ago, everything seemed pretty good in Yankees-land. Last Sunday, they wrapped up a sweep of the White Sox, who had come into the set with the best record in the American League. The three wins over Chicago gave them a six-game winning streak, and they had seemed to have somewhat fully righted the ship after the awful start to the season.
One week later, and it feels like everything is worse than it ever has been.
After a week full of bad injury news, the Yankees went into Detroit and were swept by the last-place Tigers. The worst of the series was saved for Sunday, as pretty much all facet of the game went wrong. Pitching, hitting, defense, and baserunning all had at least one bad moment as the Yankees wrapped up a brutal series with a brutal 6-2 loss to the Tigers.
After the Yankees missed out on a chance in the first inning, the Tigers struck in the bottom half of the inning. Niko Goodrum led off the game for Detroit with a single. Two batters later, Miguel Cabrera reached after being hit by a Michael King pitch. Two batters after that, Nomar Mazara hit one down the line in left. Goodrum scored easy, and thanks to a strange bounce off the wall evading Clint Frazier, Cabrera was able to come all the way around and also score.
In the second inning, the Yankees missed out on another chance to score runs and get back into the game. Once they missed out on that, it seemed like things were always destined for a loss. That was compounded in a big way in the bottom of the third.
The Yankees completely fell apart in the bottom of the third. Gleyber Torres committed two errors on his own in the frame, as things just came complete unglued. Nestor Cortes Jr. made his return and replaced King in the middle of it, but changed nothing. In total, the Tigers put up four runs on just one hit, as Detroit opened up a six-run lead.
Starting pitcher King finished with a line of four runs allowed (only two earned) on three hits and two walks in 2.1 innings.
The pitching and defense tightened up after that and kept the Tigers mostly off the board. Unfortunately, the offense couldn’t muster an answer until it was too little too late.
The Yankees did finally get on the board in the eighth inning. DJ LeMahieu led off the inning with a single, followed by Aaron Judge walking two batters later. Torres then came though with a single, scoring LeMahieu to end the shutout. It was the Yankees’ first hit with runners in scoring position all series. Gary Sánchez then provided the strangest run of this strange series. He managed to beat out an infield single, scoring another run. The throw then skipped past the first baseman, and Sánchez attempted to go to second but got himself in a rundown to end the inning. It was a mess of an out in a mess of a game.
After Cortes exited, Nick Nelson gave the Yankees two solid innings to finish things off. He struck out two while allowing two walks in two hit-less innings.
Just for fun, the Yankees brought the tying run to the plate in the ninth, only to leave the bases loaded. Let us never speak of this series again.
The slumping Yankees will have to beat the odds and cool-off the scalding hot Rays, who come to the Bronx to begin a four-game set tomorrow afternoon. Jameson Taillon will far Rich Hill at 1:05pm ET.