The Yankees walked into Monday with momentum and walked out with a 10-1 loss. Elmer Rodríguez did not get through the fourth inning, and the Angels, tied for the worst record in baseball when the night began, turned a fast start into a lopsided defeat.
The Yankee score search makes sense because this game arrived right after a weekend in which the Yankees scored 25 runs in two games against the Red Sox, then crossed the country and still looked flat. Rodríguez, who flew ahead of his teammates and landed in Los Angeles around 7:30 p.m. local time Sunday to get extra rest, walked three batters, hit two more and allowed four runs in 3 2/3 innings while needing 91 pitches to record 11 outs.
The outing was a sharp drop from last week, when Rodríguez worked six innings of three-run ball against the Astros and looked more in control. On Monday, he said he was “just falling behind a lot of hitters,” and added that when he was ahead, he was getting outs and executing good pitches. The difference showed in the first inning, when Vaughn Grissom drove in the Angels’ first run with an RBI single, and it kept growing as the Yankees never recovered.
Spencer Jones briefly gave them something to point to with a home run in the fifth inning, the Yankees’ only run in seven innings against Walbert Ureña. But the margin kept widening in the late innings, when José Caballero was charged with two errors on one play and the defense helped turn a bad night into a blowout. Michael Fulmer, Luis Gil and David Bednar each also gave up at least one run in relief, so the score kept moving in one direction after Rodríguez had already put the Yankees in a 4-0 hole.
Aaron Boone did not try to soften it. He called it “obviously an ugly one for us tonight,” said it was “a great reminder that in this league, you got to play well or you get it handed to you,” and added that fatigue was “an excuse.” Boone said the group was ready to go and simply played poorly, which matched the result more than the back story. The Yankees had just come off a strong series against the Red Sox, but that weekend form did not travel with them.
The loss left the Yankees 4 1/2 games behind the Rays in the division and allowed the Red Sox to move back within three games of them for the top AL wild card. That is the part that matters now: a team that looked revived against Boston still has to show it can handle a night like this, because the margin in the standings is shrinking and the excuses are running out.
