The Yankees had already been struggling offensively, but Wednesday they made the wrong kind of history.
The Bombers struck out 18 times against four Tigers pitchers, setting a new club record for a nine-inning game in their 2-1 loss at Yankee Stadium.
All 10 Yankees who took an at-bat struck out at least once, with Gleyber Torres and Mike Tauchman leading the way with three each. Tigers starter Matthew Boyd was responsible for 13 strikeouts, a career-high, over 6 ¹/₃ innings before relievers Buck Farmer, Joe Jimenez and Shane Greene came in for more of the same.
“The time of day makes it a little challenging seeing,” manager Aaron Boone said after the 4:07 p.m. first pitch. “They certainly pitched us tough, but we got to get better at controlling the strike zone.”
Asked about the shadows that surrounded home plate early making it tougher to see pitches — Boone later said Boyd’s breaking ball could be tough with the shadows — Aaron Judge shrugged it off.
“It’s baseball,” Judge said. “We’ve been playing with shadows our whole life. It’s not really that big of a deal.”
The Tigers, of course, were dealing with the same shadows and only struck out eight times.
But Judge did give credit to Boyd, who mixed in a strong slider to go with his fastball and curveball to catch the Yankees off-balance.
“Matty’s got a good fastball,” Judge said. “It may only sit 90-92, but it plays up. It’s definitely coming in there 95-96, it seems like. He pitches at the top of the zone, which makes it tough to get on top of those. You saw a lot of pop-ups today and weak contact. He was able to work that fastball up in the zone and work the nice slider-curveball combo off of that.”
The Yankees mustered just five hits, with DJ LeMahieu’s double serving as the only extra-base hit. In the three-game series against the Tigers, they hit just .176, and their 34 strikeouts were tied for the eighth-highest count in a three-game series in club history.
The lineup has been battered by injuries — Troy Tulowitzki’s the most recent on Wednesday — but Judge said it was “tough to say” if they were pressing and striking out because of it.
“We just haven’t been able to capitalize with guys on base,” Judge said. “That’s been our big thing. We just got to keep passing the baton. Take our walks when we can. We got a great lineup. People come in here and they give us their A-game. We got to stay on top of things.”
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Boone: You know my mama wanted me to be a Manager.
Judge: My dad wanted me to be a baseball player.
Boone: Well you're better than any player I ever had. And you're the best God damn player I ever saw. Suit up.
