BALTIMORE — Ryan Weathers spent the days before Monday’s start losing nine pounds to illness, quarantined from his newborn on a different floor of his house. He came back with his rotation spot in question and the Yankees in a tailspin.
He gave them six hitless innings, nine strikeouts, and a 2-0 lead. It was not enough. The Yankees lost 3-2. The way it happened made the score feel worse than it was.
Nine pounds lost, a newborn at home, a rotation spot in question
Weathers and his wife Thayer welcomed their first child, Paul David Weathers, on April 22. Weathers fell ill the morning of his May 2 start. The virus forced him to quarantine on a different floor of his house, away from wife and newborn. He lost nine pounds off his 6-foot-1, 230-pound frame and had not recovered all of it by Monday.
Asked about the weight, the Yankees pitcher was brief.
“I’m sneaking,” Weathers said. “I’m sneaking.”
He returned on eight days of rest with roster pressure mounting. Left-hander Carlos Rodon came back from offseason elbow surgery on May 10. Ace Gerrit Cole has made five rehab starts and is expected back in the Yankees rotation by month’s end. With the Yankees rotation about to fill up, Weathers addressed it plainly.
“It’s definitely been a couple weeks, for sure,” Weathers said. “But that doesn’t stop me from doing my job. My job is to go out and compete and throw up as many zeroes and get as many outs as I can get.”
Six hitless innings on 85 pitches, nine strikeouts, four-pitch mix
Weathers had never thrown a complete game in 62 career starts. The Yankees lefty had not topped 101 pitches in a start this season. At 85 pitches through six clean innings, a solo no-hitter was not going to happen.
Weathers used a four-pitch mix of changeup, sinker, four-seamer and sweeper in equal parts. The Orioles solved none of them. The only hitter to barrel the ball all night was Adley Rutschman, who ended the no-hit bid with a leadoff single to the right of second base in the seventh. One out later, Weathers walked Tyler O’Neill. That was pitch 101. Yankees manager Boone came out.
Headrick’s hung slider, Mayo’s three-run homer, a lead gone in one swing
Boone had limited options. Tim Hill and Fernando Cruz were both unavailable after being overworked in three tight losses at Milwaukee. The Yankees manager called on Brent Headrick to face Coby Mayo.
The matchup looked reasonable on paper. Mayo was hitting .158. Boone liked Headrick’s slider against a right-handed hitter. He expected the Orioles to counter with a left-handed pinch hitter if he used Jake Bird instead.
Headrick threw a slider. Mayo liked it. He drove it 389 feet to left field. Three-run homer. A 2-0 Yankees lead became a 3-2 Baltimore lead in one pitch.
The homer hit harder because of what surrounded it. The Yankees had built only a two-run lead against a team they outscored 39-10 in the Bronx just days earlier. One bad pitch erased the entire night because the offense gave the bullpen nothing to work with.
Five hits, zero answers: a lineup that left Weathers with nothing to spare
The Yankees produced five hits against Brandon Young and three Baltimore relievers. They went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. Ben Rice’s two-run homer in the third was the only scoring. After that, the Yankees went silent.
Runners reached. The Yankees could not drive them home. Eight total runs in four games. Three of those losses by one run. Each time the offense scraped together just enough of a lead to lose narrowly, leaving the pitching staff exposed.
Boone named the problem directly.
“We’ve scored zero, three, three, two,” Boone said of the skid. “Pitching’s been there. Continues to be there. We gotta get some guys unlocked. We got a handful of guys scuffling.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr. was the most visible example Monday. He went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and is now 8-for-48 in his recent stretch with one extra-base hit in that span. He declined to speak with reporters after the game. Through 41 games in a Yankees contract year, he is batting .201 with a .603 OPS.
Boone acknowledged the pressure of a prolonged slump with stakes attached.
“You sense guys feeling it when you’re a month-plus in and you’re not doing what the back of your baseball card is,” the Yankees skipper said. “So it’s part of it. Probably feeling that a little bit, probably pressing a little too much, trying to do a little too much. He’s going to get it going. I have no doubt about that. But sometimes you’ve got to slow things down first and have some small successes to get you going again.”
The Yankees had outscored these same Orioles 39-10 across four games in the Bronx just a week earlier. Monday’s five-hit, two-run output against a Baltimore team that came in 19-23 on the season was the starkest contrast of the whole skid.
A performance that deserved a win and did not get one
The Yankees fell to 26-16 and trail Tampa Bay by two games. Eight total runs in four games.
Weathers lost nine pounds, quarantined from his newborn and pitched anyway. He got the loss. He kept it brief.
“It was cool, but I wish we would have been able to pull out a win,” Weathers said of the no-hit bid. “We got a good ballclub, so we’re going to get some more wins.”
The Yankees got none on Monday. What they got instead was the clearest picture yet of how well the Yankees can pitch when they are right, and how badly the Yankees are hitting when they are not.
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