Yankees 2, Brewers 9: Flat offensive effort precedes bullpen meltdown

Prometheus gave fire to mankind, and for this theft from the gods he was bound to a mountainside and each day vultures descended on the titan, consuming his liver. Each night, his liver would grow back, and the cycle would continue for all of time. The Yankees gave Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe and Jasson Domínguez, and in return we have our livers ripped out every single game.

That is only a slight exaggeration, but after a two and a half hour rain delay followed by an extraordinarily boring Yankees loss, I hope no vultures come to peck out my liver as I will need its cleaning and restorative properties before the next Yankee game. Today was miserable, as New York dropped their third straight, 9-2 to the Milwaukee Brewers.

Michael King continues to make a very real case to be in the 2024 Yankee rotation, pitching five innings, allowing a single earned run and striking out nine against just one walk. He threw 79 pitches, an increase of ten over his last time out, and with about four more turns through the rotation to go, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a couple starts where he gets close to 100.

Once again his main plan of attack was to mix his sinker and slider combination, engineering either a whiff or called strike on 40 percent of those pitches. King stormed out of the gate, striking out two Brewers in the first inning and five across the first two, and only got into major trouble in the fourth and fifth.

Milwaukee’s runs against King came on a Little League Home Run by Willy Adames, whose RBI triple opened the scoring before DJ LeMahieu cut off a throw and airmailed a toss to third. Adames scampered home to double the lead:

Outside of that, King faced pressure in the fifth, tied 2-2 with a runner on third and one out. The burgeoning starter responded just how you’d want though, fanning two straight Brewers to get out of the jam — both, funnily enough, on his changeup:

Offensively, the Yankees couldn’t do much to help out their starter, or any other pitcher for that matter. They did respond with a pair of runs to tie it in the bottom of the fourth, but managed just four hits over the whole contest. It was nice to see Anthony Volpe drive in Gleyber Torres, and Everson Pereria’s hustle on the basepaths allowed a second run to score:

Outside of that, the team once again did not do enough at the plate. Domínguez and Wells were a combined 0-8 — that’s going to happen with rookies, and regardless I’d rather watch those to go 0-8 than Jake Bauers and Kyle Higashioka, but it all counts the same in the box score.

The first three Yankee pitchers on the day, King, Greg Weissert and Wandy Peralta, were all great. After that trio, there be dragons. Jonathan Loáisiga gave up a home run on the first pitch he served in the eighth. Somehow it only got worse from there, as the Brewers notched four more hits and brought in two more runners, leaving the frame up 5-2. Matt Krook was charged with four earned runs in the ninth, although two of them came because Ron Marinaccio allowed inherited runners in, walking in a run twice.

We’re back in the “hopefully they can salvage one” part of the season, and these recaps get harder and harder to write. The Yankees can squeeze out one win of this series tomorrow, but perhaps more importantly, after Kevin Gausman’s strong outing today Gerrit Cole will look to keep his pole position in the Cy Young race. First pitch tomorrow comes at 1:35pm

Box Score