Yankees lose ridiculous 13-inning marathon with Mariners, 1-0
SEATTLE — Last season, the Yankees ran themselves out of games with their bad decisions on the basepaths. Tuesday night, that bad habit, which they thought they eliminated, came back to haunt them. Three base-running mistakes in extra innings and four overall were too much for even tremendous pitching to overcome as the Bombers lost to the Mariners 1-0 in 13 innings at T-Mobile Park.
Jonathan Loaisiga gave up a line-drive single to backup catcher Luis Torrens for the Mariners winning run after the Yankees had coughed up chance after chance after chance to put a run on the board in extra innings. That proved costly Tuesday night and may have ramifications down the road.
The Yankees (71-40) dropped their sixth out of their last seven games and that dropped them into a tie for the best record in the American League with the Astros. Houston, however, holds the tiebreaker and would have the home-field advantage in the playoffs if they finish with identical records.
Tuesday night, with aces Gerrit Cole and Luis Castillo dueling it out, snappy defensive plays being made behind them had a playoff-like feel. Cole pitched seven scoreless, scattering four hits and striking out eight. Castillo went eight innings holding the Yankees scoreless, striking out seven, walking two and working around three hits.
In that kind of pitchers’ duel, mistakes like the one the Yankees made on the bases are the difference between advancing and going home early.
“It’s been one of the real strengths of this team, so I don’t want us to lose our aggressiveness, but obviously we gotta be a little smarter,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “The last ones I mean, the guy catches the ball behind his back so he’s hidden behind the runner so I don’t have any issue with (Jose Trevino) going there. And then Isiah is doing all he can to try and get the second with the rundown going on. But we gotta freeze on line drives. w I don’t want to lose our aggression on the basis. We’ve been really successful; stealing bases at a good clip, but we’ve got to be a little smarter. And we’ve had a couple here in the last couple of weeks that have kind of hurt us, but I think the biggest thing tonight is we just had a hard time getting hits.”
The Yankees had three out of the four ghost runners run into outs on the basepaths Tuesday night.
As the ghost runner in the top of the 12th, Jose Trevino got tagged out in a short rundown going to third on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s infield ground ball. The shortstop inexplicably tried to advance to second. He was called out on a tag going out of the base path.
Andrew Benintendi, after Josh Donaldson was hit by a pitch to lead off the 10th, was caught in a rundown trying to steal third. Miguel Andujar took an aggressive lead at second base and was doubled off when Adam Frazier made a leaping grab of Aaron Hicks’ line drive.
“They’re just tough plays. It’s tough situations, especially in the games and it’s a good learning experience,” Kiner-Falefa said. “We definitely need to do a better job on the basepaths, but we tried to be aggressive all year and tonight it kind of backfired on us a little bit. It helped us win a lot of games earlier in the year and tonight, it just didn’t go our way.”
The Yankees got scoreless innings from Cole, Aroldis Chapman, Clay Holmes and Scott Effross. Wandy Peralta worked out of a jam and gave them 1.1 scoreless and Lou Tivino got out of another in 0.2 of an inning. Jonathan Loaisiga gave up a leadoff single to Cal Raleigh and intentionally walked Sam Haggerty, before giving up the winning single to Torrens.
“If you’re walking away from this one, you’re like Man, I wish maybe we didn’t make so many outs on the bases, specifically about this game. And I think there are going to be times when it’s going to be a 50/50 scenario where you just don’t get the pitches to hit because the opposition makes good enough pitches,” Cole said. “And then there’s going to be times where those little details end up costing you or end up costing you at least an opportunity to kind of push it through.
“You just have to be so fine in games like this.”
