Erik Boland: Yankees generally are looking good, but can they beat winning teams?
Brice Turang of the Milwaukee Brewers hits a walk-off home run in the ninth inning against the New York Yankees at American Family Field on Sunday in Milwaukee. Credit: Getty Images/John Fisher
MILWAUKEE — Few need reminding how the Yankees did in 2025 against some of the better teams on their schedule.
It was a season-long narrative — a narrative that perhaps ranked as manager Aaron Boone's least favorite — with the club's issues especially pronounced against two of its top rivals in the AL East, the Red Sox and Blue Jays.
The Yankees went 4-9 against the Red Sox and 5-8 against Toronto in 2025. The latter mark cost them the AL East tiebreaker and gave the Blue Jays home-field advantage in the clubs' Division Series matchup won by Toronto.
It is far too soon to say it will be rinse-repeat this season, but in what has been a severely watered-down American League, the Yankees have lost each series they’ve played against teams with a winning record.
That already was assured by virtue of Saturday night’s 10-inning loss to the Brewers, who completed a three-game sweep Sunday afternoon. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning after a pair of strikeouts, Brice Turang jumped David Bednar's first-pitch curveball and sent it 411 feet to center for a 4-3 victory, the Brewers' second straight walk-off win by that score.
While the sweep didn’t invalidate the fact that the Yankees entered the series having won 16 of their last 19 games in building an AL-best 26-12 record, it did raise some of the familiar questions about them when it comes to what happens when they face clubs with a phalanx of power arms.
That was the case April 10-12 in St. Petersburg when the Yankees were swept by the Rays. It certainly was the case here at American Family Field as the Brewers seemingly utilized pitcher after pitcher capable of hitting 100 mph on the radar.
The Yankees went a combined 16-for-95 (.168) with 39 strikeouts in the series.
“They’ve got an incredible pitching staff,” said Aaron Judge, who hit his 16th homer of the season in the first inning (and seventh homer in his last 14 games) to give his team a 1-0 lead. “From the starting rotation to their bullpen, their back-end bullpen . . . they run it up to 97-plus. They’ve got a good thing going over there. Made for some tough at-bats, some long days.”
The numbers were eerily similar to those from the three-game sweep by the Rays, whose collective pitching staff has drawn similar remarks. The Yankees went 20-for-102 (.196) with 29 strikeouts.
That’s 0-6 against the Rays (who are an AL-best 26-13) and Brewers (22-16) and 1-8 against teams with a winning record (they lost two of three to the A’s on April 7-9 at the Stadium).
Not surprisingly, Boone wasn’t much interested in exploring that 1-8.
Specifically: does he make anything of that?
“No,” he said. “We’re really good. We had a bad series. So not much.”
Of the series, Boone said: “Tough weekend, obviously. Didn’t play our best and they pitched really well against us and matched up well against us, but just not able to string together enough big hits there.”
Judge’s blast and the first career hit by Spencer Jones, a line-drive RBI single with an exit velocity of 106.4 mph in the second inning, gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead. But Carlos Rodon, making his first start of the season after rehabbing from offseason elbow surgery, struggled with his command.
Rodon walked the leadoff man in the first and second innings and avoided damage but could not do so in the fourth after walking the first two batters and hitting the third. After a sacrifice fly, Rodon, who walked five, threw one to the backstop for a wild pitch, and Blake Perkins’ two-out, two-run single gave Milwaukee a 3-2 lead.
“Obviously, I would have liked to perform better,” Rodon said. "I thought the boys played well, and that’s a good team.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s RBI double with two outs in the sixth tied it at 3-3.
The Yankees move on to Camden Yards on Monday to face what decidedly has not been a good team this season in Baltimore. The Orioles feature an injury-riddled and overwhelmed pitching staff, one the Yankees abused May 1-4 during a four-game sweep at the Stadium in which they outscored Baltimore 39-10.
It would not at all be surprising if the Yankees again take Orioles pitchers to the woodshed and, in Boone’s words, “right the ship” after this weekend’s disappointment.
But that won’t do anything to right what Boone believes is an incorrect narrative about his team when it comes to performing against the better clubs on the schedule.
There’s only one way to do that.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
