NEW YORK — The Yankees had one real chance to change Thursday’s game, and Aaron Boone chose to gamble.
It came in the eighth inning, in a game the Yankees trailed by a single run. The spot called for a pinch-hitter, and Boone had a decision to make about one of his hottest bats against left-handed pitching.
He sat him down. In a matchup that would loom over the afternoon, the Yankees manager lifted Spencer Jones, a left-handed hitter, for the right-handed Heliot Ramos against Seattle reliever Jose Ferrer.
The move was defensible on paper. It also did not work. Ramos grounded out, the rally died, and the Yankees fell 1-0 to the Mariners in front of 41,842 at Yankee Stadium, failing to complete a sweep.
The loss dropped the Yankees to 68-53 and, on a day the Tampa Bay Rays were idle, pushed them to a season-worst 6 1/2 games back in the AL East. It was their seventh shutout of the season, and the decision at its center will linger.
The split that made the call puzzling
What made the move surprising was Jones’s recent production against left-handers. In a small sample of 29 plate appearances, the rookie had gone 8-for-25 with two home runs, two doubles, a triple and a 1.134 OPS versus lefties. Those are numbers that usually keep a hitter in the box.
Boone saw it differently, and his reasoning centered on the specific reliever. Ferrer is not an ordinary lefty. Entering the day, he had held left-handed hitters to a .553 OPS with zero home runs in 109 plate appearances. Right-handers, by contrast, had crushed him to the tune of a .913 OPS with five home runs.
That reverse split is rare, and it drove the matchup. Boone wanted a right-handed bat, and he had acquired one for exactly this kind of moment.
Boone explained that neutralizing tough lefties was part of the thinking behind adding Ramos at the trade deadline.
“That’s one of the reasons we brought Heliot Ramos in was his presence against [lefties],” Boone said.
Boone stands by the matchup
Ramos entered the at-bat hitting .271 with a .795 OPS against southpaws this season, the profile that made him Boone’s choice over both Jones and Paul Goldschmidt. The manager said he did not consider leaving Jones in to face Ferrer, given how the reliever’s numbers tilt against left-handed hitters.
Boone described what makes Ferrer such an unusual case, the reason the platoon logic overrode Jones’s hot streak.
“Really struggled with right-handed hitters,” Boone said, calling Ferrer “unique.”
The gamble fit the kind of scenario general manager Brian Cashman likely imagined when he acquired Ramos from the San Francisco Giants. On this afternoon, though, the payoff never came. Ramos grounded out and remained mired in a rough start to his Yankees tenure at 2-for-25. Jones, for his part, had gone 0-for-3 with a strikeout after a strong game Wednesday.
A familiar shutout with the stars out
The bigger problem was the same one that has shadowed the Yankees for weeks. With Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger all watching from the dugout, the lineup managed just four hits and went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.
Seattle starter Logan Gilbert set the tone with six shutout innings, allowing four hits and striking out seven. The Mariners bullpen finished the job, with Andres Munoz closing it out for the save. The Yankees offense, so alive during a 10-run outburst on Wednesday, went quiet a day later.
Their best threats fizzled. Luis Garcia Jr., the only Yankee with multiple hits, doubled to lead off the second, but the next three hitters went down in order. A third-inning chance ended when Trent Grisham was tagged out drifting off second base on a replay challenge. A seventh-inning rally died when pinch-hitter Amed Rosario struck out on a Mariners automated ball-strike challenge, the third Yankees batter erased that way.
Max Fried deserved better. The left-hander allowed one run on five hits over five innings, his lone mistake a second-inning solo home run to Weston Wilson. It was the first homer Fried had surrendered in 10 starts. He took the loss anyway.
A grind the Yankees insist will pay off
The Yankees have somehow won 18 of their past 29 games while living on this razor’s edge. Their last three losses came by scores of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-1. The margin is thin, and everyone in the clubhouse knows it.
Boone has framed the daily tension as preparation for October, even as the strain shows.
“It’s been playoffs every day, it feels like,” the Yankees skipper said. “We’re just grinding through it right now.”
Rookie George Lombard Jr., impressive again with his glove but 0-for-4 at the plate, echoed the idea that these tight games have value. He cast them as reps for the baseball that matters most.
“Games like this are battles,” Lombard said. “And that’s how games are in October. So just practice finding a way to win those tight games.”
For now, the Yankees remain second in the AL East and hold a comfortable lead in the wild-card race, but the division is slipping away. They head to Toronto and then Baltimore with an offense still waiting on its stars, and a manager whose one big decision Thursday did not break their way.
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