Yankees muster only three hits, fall to Astros for seventh loss in nine games
Anthony Volpe of the Yankees strikes out to end a game against the Houston Astros at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
After Saturday’s dramatic win over the Astros, Trent Grisham surmised that the Yankees were close to getting “really, really hot.”
Not quite.
The Yankees’ bats went really, really cold Sunday afternoon, mustering only three hits in a 7-1 loss to Houston in front of 43,658 at the Stadium.
“Obviously we’re feeling it, and we know we have to be better,” manager Aaron Boone said. “We know we have a much higher standard for ourselves and expectations. But at the same time, we’re in control of this. I wholeheartedly believe that we are going to get rolling and turn this thing around. And when it does, then you really start to build that next layer of confidence where guys are kind of feeding off each other.
“It’s all just talk right now, but that’s how I feel about it. We got to go do it.”
The Yankees (62-56) have lost seven of their last nine and 31 of their last 51. They remained a half-game ahead of Cleveland and 2 1⁄2 games ahead of Texas for the American League’s third wild card. They are 2 1⁄2 games behind Boston and 3 1⁄2 games behind Seattle in the wild-card race and 6 1⁄2 games behind AL East-leading Toronto.
“We’re just not playing good baseball, that’s what it comes down to,” Aaron Judge said. “I wouldn’t say guys are feeling it. We got a tough group in here. Obviously, we want to play better. It does not feel good losing, especially the position we were at early in the season, we were in first place. So it comes down to us just playing better baseball.”
Righthander Jason Alexander, who entered Sunday with a 5.97 ERA, held the Yankees hitless through 5 1⁄3 innings. Ben Rice singled for the Yankees’ first hit in the sixth, but Judge (0-for-3) hit into an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play.
Alexander (3-1, 5.02 ERA) allowed the one hit and three walks in six innings.
Max Fried (12-5, 2.94 ERA) threw a lackluster five innings, allowing four runs (all with two outs) and eight hits and a walk. Fried has a 6.00 ERA in his last seven starts.
“They really grinded me down and put together some good at-bats,” he said. “In a game where I needed to come out and have some good stuff and get better results, I didn’t.”
The Yankees have allowed 201 runs since July 1. Only the Rockies and the Nationals have allowed more, according to researcher Katie Sharp.
Again unbothered by the boos and obscenities from Yankees fans, Jose Altuve (2-for-3) homered on the first pitch Fried threw him — a 94-mph fastball up in the zone — in the first inning for the game’s first run.
With two outs in the third, Altuve poked Fried’s 1-and-2 curveball to rightfield for a single. Christian Walker followed with an RBI double over Jasson Dominguez’s head and off the base of the leftfield wall, extending the Astros’ lead to 2-0.
Fried was fortunate to escape the fourth unscathed after Mauricio Dubon singled and Chas McCormick hit a ground-rule double with two outs. If not for McCormick’s double bouncing over the wall, Dubon would have scored. Jeremy Pena hit a five-foot dribbler to Austin Wells, who tagged him to end the inning.
The Astros made it 4-0 in the fifth on Cam Smith’s two-run double to rightfield with the bases loaded. Fried’s 2-and-2 fastball to Smith painted the outside corner to seemingly end the inning, but plate umpire Derek Thomas called it a ball.
“It definitely would have been nice, but no one’s going to look back and really care, right?” Fried said. “Just got to be able to make the pitch and get out of it anyway.”
Two pitches later, Smith roped Fried’s 96.1-mph sinker over a leaping Rice at first base.
The Yankees squandered a bases-loaded, one-out opportunity in the seventh, scoring only one run on Ryan McMahon’s sacrifice fly to shallow left as Jazz Chisholm Jr. dashed home.
The Astros added three runs off Tim Hill in the ninth on a leadoff home run by Carlos Correa and RBI singles by Ramon Urias and Dubon.
“Tough when you’re not getting anything rolling, not stacking good at-bats,” McMahon said. “But hopefully the tides will turn pretty soon.”
Thomas ejected Boone for arguing balls and strikes in the middle of McMahon’s at-bat in the third. Boone appeared to yell “four” at Thomas while holding up four fingers from the dugout, presumably a reference to how many pitches he thought Thomas had missed, leading to the ejection.
“I was on him a lot,” Boone said. “That’s over and done with is what it is. That isn’t the reason we lost this game. We got to find a way to put it all together, and we weren’t able to do that again today.”
Notes & quotes: Devin Williams struck out McCormick, Pena and Correa in the sixth and Brent Headrick struck out four in the seventh and eighth . . . Amed Rosario was placed on the 10-day injured list retroactive to Saturday with a left SC joint sprain. Rosario crashed into the rightfield wall during the 10th inning of Friday night’s 5-3 loss. The pain is in the upper chest area. Rosario said through an interpreter that he feels “day-to-day” and plans to come back after 10 days . . . The Yankees recalled J.C. Escarra from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Ben Dickson is Newsday Sports' general assignment reporter. He joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
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