NEW YORK — The Yankees made the St. Louis Cardinals work for everything Wednesday night, and it still was not enough. They drew walk after walk, ran deep counts, and forced five Cardinals pitchers to throw 188 pitches. They scored one run.
St. Louis won 3-1 at a rain-soaked Yankee Stadium, taking two of three in the series and handing the Yankees another night of wasted traffic. Rain pushed the first pitch back more than an hour, and a bank of stadium lights briefly went dark twice in the opening inning. The Yankees put 13 runners on base. Eleven of them were stranded.
It was a familiar kind of loss for a lineup that has gone cold. All the patience in the world means nothing without a hit to cash it in, and the Yankees could not find one when it mattered.
They went 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Their lone run did not even come on a hit. It came on a bases-loaded walk.
The defeat dropped the Yankees to 64-51, four games behind the first-place Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East, with the Boston Red Sox lurking close behind. A lineup missing Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton is grinding out at-bats but not runs, and the results are starting to define the season.
The Yankees have scored 60 runs in their last 19 games, about 3.1 per night. Since June 8, no team in the majors has hit worse with runners in scoring position.
Patience without payoff
The approach was sound. The Yankees drew eight walks, added a hit batter and pushed nearly every Cardinals pitcher deep into counts. On another night, that pressure breaks a game open.
Instead it produced almost nothing. The Yankees managed four hits and left 11 men on base. They lost a runner when Luis García Jr. was picked off, and erased another with a double play. Every rally stalled a step short.
The only breakthrough came in the sixth, and it took a string of small events rather than a swing. Ben Rice, who reached base three times on walks, opened the inning with a walk and took two bases on a wild pitch and a throwing error. Luis García Jr. then knocked Pallante out of the game by drawing a walk that stretched 11 pitches. George Soriano relieved and hit Heliot Ramos to load the bases.
Even then, the Yankees barely made it count. Soriano kept missing the zone, and St. Louis twice challenged full-count calls. The first, against Spencer Jones, was overturned into a strikeout. The second, against Jazz Chisholm Jr., stood as ball four, forcing in the Yankees’ only run. They left the bases loaded and did not score again.
Warren undone by one bad inning
Will Warren deserved better and also invited the trouble. The right-hander cruised through four innings before the Cardinals found him in the fifth, and the damage came fast.
After Blaze Jordan and Jimmy Crooks singled, Warren nearly escaped. Austin Wells challenged a ball-four call and had it flipped to strike three for the second out. But with two outs, JJ Wetherholt lined a two-run double over the head of center fielder Trent Grisham, and Iván Herrera followed with a ground-rule double to make it 3-0. In one inning, St. Louis scored all the runs it would need.
Warren returned for the sixth, put another runner on and was pulled. He finished with three runs on seven hits and one walk over 5.1 innings, striking out five on 91 pitches. He fell to 8-6 with a 4.18 ERA, and his hold on a rotation spot grows less certain as arms return from injury.
Warren did not shy from the two pitches that beat him, pointing to the location on the doubles that turned the game.
“In hindsight, I’d probably throw a different pitch to Wetherholt, but honestly, he put a good swing on it,” Warren said. “I think the Herrera at-bat, I kind of gave him a gift there, middle of the plate.”
Boone defended his starter, framing the loss as much on the silent lineup as on the two-out mistakes.
“He made a few mistakes in the heart of the plate, but overall, [Warren] pitched well,” Boone said. “We’ve got to give ourselves more margin for error.”
The stakes behind Warren’s outing are real. With Carlos Rodón set to begin a rehab assignment at Triple-A on Saturday and Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole and Max Fried entrenched, the Yankees may soon have one rotation spot left for either Warren or the surging Ryan Weathers, with the other headed to the bullpen.
The Yankees’ bullpen kept the game within reach. Kervin Castro stranded two inherited runners, and Tim Hill and Paul Blackburn combined to hold St. Louis scoreless the rest of the way. The relief kept the door open. The offense never walked through it.
The Bronx edge is gone
The loss exposed a strange trend that has quietly shaped the Yankees’ year. At home, the team many expected to bully opponents at Yankee Stadium is barely above .500, sitting at 27-25 in the Bronx.
On the road, the Yankees are a different club. They are 37-26 away from home, a gap that flips the usual home-field logic on its head. The ballpark built for their left-handed power has not delivered the edge it was supposed to.
Wednesday fit the pattern. The Yankees hit into the Yankee Stadium night without a single extra-base hit landing at the right moment. Paul Goldschmidt and Heliot Ramos each doubled, but neither came around, and the short porch stayed quiet.
Ramos’s double was at least a personal marker, his first hit as a Yankee since arriving from San Francisco at the trade deadline. It did not lead anywhere on the scoreboard.
A rookie’s bright night in a dim game
Amid the gloom, George Lombard Jr. offered a reason to watch. A night after homering in his debut, the rookie shortstop went 1 for 4 with a fifth-inning single and again dazzled in the field. His signature play came in the third, when he ranged to his left and dove to spear a 105.5 mph one-hopper off the bat of Wetherholt, then rose from the outfield grass and threw him out. He also helped turn a double play in the second and handled a tough hop in the seventh.
Boone has run out of ordinary words for the rookie’s defense.
“A couple of really solid plays, and then the sparkler up the middle, special play,” Boone said. “He’s obviously very athletic and quick and cat-like in a lot of ways, but really good range.”
The bat is still catching up. In the eighth, with two outs and two runners on, Lombard came up with a chance to give the Yankees the lead and struck out, a reminder that even a promising start comes with rookie lessons.
The rest of the Yankees lineup gave him little cover. García reached base but was erased on the bases. The middle of the order went quiet. For all the baserunners, the Yankees never strung together the two hits that turn pressure into runs.
The Cardinals, meanwhile, did their damage in a single efficient inning and let their bullpen close it out. Andre Pallante earned the win, Warren took the loss, and Riley O’Brien finished it for the save.
The Yankees have an off day Thursday before opening a three-game series against the Atlanta Braves on Friday, with left-hander Max Fried set to start. The schedule offers a reset. The lineup needs one. Until the hits with runners aboard start falling, the walks and deep counts will keep adding up to nights like this, full of resistance and empty of runs.
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