NEW YORK — Seven pitches in. Three hits. One run. The beginning felt like a breakout.
Then came 153 more pitches from five Yankees pitchers, 27 more outs, and exactly one more hit. The offense that arrived so sharply in the first inning vanished so completely afterward that it left David Bednar stranded in the ninth with an impossible job.
He could not get it done. The Athletics could. The Yankees lost 3-2 on Wednesday night in front of 38,147 shivering fans at Yankee Stadium, dropping to 8-3 on the season.
It was the Yankees’ third one-run loss of the year, each of their three defeats coming by a single run. They have a chance to take the series Thursday afternoon in the rubber game.
How the night unraveled in the ninth
The Yankees entered the ninth inning holding a 2-2 tie. Tim Hill, Camilo Doval and Brent Headrick had combined for three scoreless, efficient innings to keep the game alive after Will Warren struggled through 4-and-two-thirds innings. The bullpen had done its job.
David Bednar, who had recorded a save on Tuesday using only 14 pitches, took the mound for the ninth. Nick Kurtz led off with a single. Shea Langeliers doubled. Brent Rooker lifted a sacrifice fly to center field. Kurtz scored standing up. The A’s had the lead with no outs remaining for the Yankees.
Elvis Alvarado recorded two outs for the Oakland bullpen to keep the Yankees from responding. Joel Kuhnel worked a perfect ninth for his second career save, his first since 2022. Game over.
Bednar, working in bitter cold and on the back side of a heavy World Baseball Classic workload, saw his velocity dip somewhat Wednesday. Manager Aaron Boone pushed back on the idea that his closer was the reason the Yankees lost.
“I think once we get rolling into this, he’ll be fine,” Boone said.
The larger point Boone made was harder to argue against. Bednar was not the problem on Wednesday night. The Yankees offense was.
The offense froze from the second inning on
After those early three consecutive singles including Cody Bellinger’s blooper to left field and a pair of walks that forced in a second run against former Yankee Luis Severino, the Yankees went silent. Amed Rosario singled in the fourth, but a double play erased that opportunity immediately. The lineup went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and finished 1-for-20 from the fourth through ninth spots in the order.
J.C. Escarra, who drew the walk that produced the Yankees’ second run in the first, summed up the night plainly.
“That’s just baseball,” Escarra said. “We’ve had a lot of good games offensively. Today wasn’t one of them.”
Boone was equally direct about where the game was lost.
“The story was we just didn’t score when we had a chance to throw a knockout punch early,” Boone said.
The most painful missed chance came in the first inning itself. Rosario came to the plate with the bases loaded on Severino’s 32nd pitch and struck out. The Yankees never got another opportunity like that one.
The best late chance came in the seventh. Two walks brought Bellinger to the plate with two outs and the game tied. He swung through a curveball and drove his bat into the dirt.
“Couldn’t break through,” Boone said, “and then they held us down.”
Severino turns back the clock at Yankee Stadium
Luis Severino spent 11 seasons pitching for the Yankees from 2012 through 2023. He knows that mound. He knew the hitters. On Wednesday, he leaned on both advantages.
Severino gave up four hits and five walks in five innings but allowed just two runs, both in the first inning. After that, he was nearly untouchable. He finished the night by striking out Aaron Judge and Ben Rice to end the fifth, roaring off the Yankee Stadium mound with the energy of a pitcher who never lost confidence in his stuff.
“He’s got great stuff and he didn’t flinch,” Boone said.
The Athletics scored their tying runs in the fourth inning against Will Warren. Lawrence Butler singled. Max Muncy singled. Jeff McNeil, celebrating his 34th birthday and hitting .500 on his birthdays in his career at 8-for-16, lined a single through the left side that scored Butler. Warren then walked Carlos Cortes to load the bases and bounced a curveball off Escarra for a wild pitch that tied the game at 2. Both runs were charged to Warren, who finished with two runs allowed on five hits and three walks over 4-and-two-thirds innings.
McMahon at short and Rice’s four strikeouts add context
With Anthony Volpe still on the injured list and Jose Caballero unavailable, Ryan McMahon made his first big league start at shortstop on Wednesday. He handled five assists and committed no errors. Defensively, the experiment held up. Offensively, the same story continued.
Ryan McMahon went 0-for-3 with a walk, two strikeouts, and a fourth-inning double play that drew audible boos from the crowd. He is now 2-for-26 on the season, hitting .077. His sixth-inning walk was his only positive plate appearance of the night.
Boone maintained his belief that the slump is temporary.
“Mac’s a good major league hitter,” Boone said. “We’re 10 games in. He’ll get it rolling.”
Ben Rice had the worst night of his young Yankees career at the plate. He went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, the first four-strikeout game of his big league career. Rice had been one of the more encouraging stories of the Yankees’ early season before Wednesday. The Yankees’ season strikeout rate with runners in scoring position dropped further, now sitting at 22-for-97 (.227) for the year.
Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake was ejected in the third inning by plate umpire Carlos Torres for arguing ball and strike calls from the dugout. The tension level on the Yankees bench reflected the frustration of a night when the opportunities were there and the results were not.
The Yankees remain in first place in the AL East at 8-3 with a 3.5-game lead over Baltimore. Thursday’s rubber game gives them a chance to restore some comfort. It will require a performance much closer to what they showed in winning the first two games of the series than what they produced on Wednesday night.
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