Aaron Judge homers again but Tommy Kahnle implodes as Yankees drop 5th straight series with loss to Nationals
NEW YORK — Fresh off of breaking a nine-game losing streak with a feel-good victory featuring three Aaron Judge homers on Wednesday night, the Yankees dropped a heart-breaker on Thursday afternoon to the Nationals, 6-5.
Entering the seventh inning owning a 3-1 lead, Tommy Kahnle gave it all back and then some. Alex Call’s two-run homer gave the Nationals the lead and then CJ Abrams followed up with a solo homer going back-to-back for the exclamation point.
Kahnle, who was greeted by the boo birds walking off the mound, spoiled what was otherwise a strong performance for the Yankees’ arms.
Michael King, in his second start of the season, tossed 2.2 innings allowing one unearned run on one hit while striking out three. The right-hander is being stretched out with hopes of joining the starting rotation at some point in the future. King reached 50 pitches before being pulled in the third after Anthony Volpe’s 12th error.
Jhony Brito took on some length, too, executing Aaron Boone’s bullpen day plans. The right-hander was charged with one run — allowed by Kahnle on Jake Alu’s single — over 2.1 innings with two strikeouts. The 25-year-old’s ERA sits at 5.27 on the season as he also auditions for a spot as a starting pitcher.
Judge homered for the fourth time in two games as Thursday got off to a promising start. The Captain lined one into the right-center field bullpen off of Nats’ starter Patrick Corbin in the bottom of the first for his 28th homer of the season despite playing in just 73 games.
Gleyber Torres added a two-run shot of his own in the bottom of the third reaching the 20 homer mark for the fourth time in his career. Torres has been one of the very few consistent contributors for the Bombers this season.
Giancarlo Stanton added a solo shot in the eighth off of Jordan Weems, however, Joey Menesis got the run right back in the ninth with an infield single. Kyle Finnegan came on to record the final three outs and made things interesting in the ninth.
Stanton drilled an RBI single to cut the lead to one run as Harrison Bader stepped up with the tying run on second and the winning run on first. Bader put a charge into one but it was tracked down at the warning track in left-center field giving the Nats the victory.
At this point, wins and losses are merely just numbers for the Yanks as they own a 0.3% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs, and have not won a series since July 21-23 against the Kansas City Royals.
Developing youngsters such as Everson Pereira and Oswald Peraza will be a primary objective the rest of the way. The youngsters called up to take the rest of the season learning the way of MLB did not come out of the gate firing. While Pereira picked up his first-career hit in the bottom of the eighth — a 111.8 mph double down the left field line — the two combined 2-for-22 in their first series since being called-up.
The Yankees will head to Tampa to begin a three-game set with the Rays on Friday. Gerrit Cole will take the mound continuing his push for the Cy Young Award against right-hander Zach Efflin.
