Yankees lineup reverts to punchless ways in loss to Mariners as AL East deficit grows
Burned by using all of their weekly allotment of runs Wednesday, the Yankees didn’t have much of a chance an afternoon later.If Tuesday’s big, four-run inning and Wednesday’s big, 10-run game looked like the beginnings of a stirring of the Yankees’ offense, Thursday the group looked drowsy once more.Perhaps that was the Logan Gilbert effect, but regardless of the cause the Yankees were held down in a 1-0 shutout in front of 41,842 in The Bronx, where they could not finish off a sweep of the Mariners.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.
On a day the Rays were idle, the Yankees (68-53) fell to a season-worst 6 ½ games behind in the AL East before trips to Toronto and Baltimore.With Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger watching from the dugout, the offense they left behind mustered nothing off Gilbert (six scoreless, seven-strikeout innings) and the Mariners’ bullpen, finishing with four hits.They did not have many chances and did not do much with the few they did.Luis Garcia Jr.
(the only Yankee with multiple hits) led off the second with an opposite-field double, and he never made it to third.Their best opportunity probably came in the third, when Ali Sanchez sliced a one-out single down the right field line before Trent Grisham drilled what looked like a double into the same area.But Grisham’s momentum took him into and briefly off of second base, and a Mariners challenge found that he had been tagged out coming off the base.
After a Ben Rice ground out, Sanchez was stranded on third.No other Yankee reached scoring position until the seventh, when a rally formed around Jose Caballero walking, reaching second on an error and stealing third to pair with a Ryan McMahon walk.But Aaron Boone inserted Amed Rosario for Sanchez, and Rosario became the third Yankee punched out on a Mariners automated ball-strike system challenge.No Yankees ba...