Yankees watch Phillies steadily pull away
New York Yankees third baseman Ryan McMahon (19) follows through on a single against the Philadelphia Phillies during the sixth inning at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY, on Saturday, Jul 26, 2025. The single was his first hit as a member of the Yankees. Credit: Brad Penner
Off the field, the Yankees sidestepped a potential disaster when the pain in Aaron Judge’s right elbow was determined to be a flexor strain and not a torn UCL. On the field, however, they couldn’t sidestep the Phillies.
Starter Marcus Stroman was ineffective, putting them in an early hole that just got bigger. Philadelphia pounded 13 hits, scored in five of the first seven innings and put a 9-4 hurting on the Yankees before 46,621 at the Stadium.
The game wasn’t as close as the score suggests, and a shockingly large swath of the crowd was Phillies fans.
Looking for a Yankees bright spot? Giancarlo Stanton hit his seventh homer in his last 16 games, a two-run shot to rightfield in the seventh inning that cut the margin to six runs. And newly acquired third baseman Ryan McMahon made a spectacular diving backhand stop and long throw for an out and got his first hit as a Yankee.
“Pretty special play,” manager Aaron Boone said of McMahon’s defensive gem. “It’s a play that he looks like he’s made for and is comfortable doing.”
The Yankees have lost four of their last five games and 23 of their last 37. They led the AL East by seven games in late May and by 4½ games before this collapse began but now are 6 1⁄2 games behind first-place Toronto. Beginning May 28, the Jays have gone 37-14 and gained 14 1⁄2 games on the Yankees.
The Yankees’ lead in the wild-card standings has shrunk to a half-game over the Mariners, one game over the Red Sox and 1 1⁄2 games over the Rangers. They are 3 1⁄2 games ahead of the Rays, whom they will host in a four-game series this week.
Stroman turned in the worst of his five performances since his return from knee inflammation that kept him out for 2½ months and put the Yankees in a considerably bad spot before the fourth inning was halfway over. He retired only 55% of the Phillies batters he faced.
Stroman gave up four runs, five hits and four walks in 3 2⁄3 innings and needed a whopping 89 pitches to do it.
“[It’s] a great lineup one through nine,” Stroman said of the Phillies. “I’ve just got to throw more strikes, [It’s] too many walks overall . . . I was just right around the plate, just missing with a bunch of pitches . . . My stuff was really good today. I just need to be more in the zone.”
He gave up a two-out RBI single by J.T. Realmuto in the first and a two-out solo homer by Bryce Harper in the third before walking in a run during Philadelphia’s two-run fourth.
“He was making an effort to be aggressive in the zone and on both sides of the plate against a really challenging lineup for him,” Boone said. “Then he kind of lost it a little bit with that zone and that pitch count kind of got away and ran up on him.”
The Yankees were fortunate to trail by only 4-0 when Stroman was lifted for Yerry de los Santos. When de los Santos got Brandon Marsh to hit into an inning-ending groundout with the bases loaded, Philadelphia had left eight on base in the first four frames.
The Yankees got a run back on Jasson Dominguez’s RBI single in the fourth but gave up one in the sixth and four in the seventh, including a two-run homer by Edmundo Sosa off Allan Winans, to fall into a 9-1 deficit. Stanton’s line-drive homer made it 9-3 and the Yankees added a run in the eighth on three walks and a balk.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
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