The Yankees‘ bats continued to slump, Will Warren struggled, and the Red Sox turned the game into a laugher late, as New York fell 12-1 on Saturday afternoon in The Bronx.

A seven-run ninth inning inflated the score after the Yankees had two on with one out in the previous half inning, but again, they couldn’t get the big hit when it mattered. The home team managed just seven hits and two walks compared to 17 hits and five walks (plus a hit batter) for the visitors.

Garrett Crochet just ate the Yanks’ lunch, save one pitch in the fourth inning, allowing one run on five hits and a walk over seven innings with 11 strikeouts on 103 pitches (72 strikes). 

With the loss, New York’s eighth straight to Boston, the Yankees are now 69-60 (37-28 at home) on the year and 1.5 games behind the Red Sox (71-59).

Here are the takeaways…

– Warren allowed a single and a walk with a strikeout through two frames, but got into a spot of bother with one out in the second when back-to-back singles put runners at the corners. After falling behind 2-0 to Alex Bregman, the Yanks’ infield came for a visit to see if Warren could regroup, but he walked the Sox third baseman on a full count, one pitch after another defensive miscue as catcher Austin Wells whiffed on a pop-up behind home plate, battling a high sky. Warren got Jarren Duran swinging at a curveball in the dirt, but hung a sweeper right over the plate to Trevor Story, who lined it down the line in left for a two-RBI double to open the scoring.

Warren was right back in a jam two pitches into the fourth: Ceddanne Rafaela cranked a ground-rule double to center and David Hamilton singled to left to cover the corners. After the Yankee righty hit Carlos Narváez with a 1-2 pitch, a Roman Anthony sac fly to deep center was followed by Bregman’s sac fly to deep left, doubling Boston’s advantage.

Warren’s first pitch of the fifth was deposited into the right field seats by Story, as a sinker over the plate was sent out in a hurry (106.2 mph, 373 feet). And that would be the end of his day. His final line: 4.0 innings, seven hits, five runs, three walks, and three strikeouts on 69 pitches (41 strikes). His ERA is now 4.47 on the year.

– Giancarlo Stanton started off the bottom of the fourth by driving a Crochet fastball 370 feet to right-center for his 16th home run of the season. The slugger smoked the ball (103.7 mph off the bat) that just snuck over the wall for a homer that only would have happened in The Bronx

He got his seventh start of the year in right field and caught the first ball hit at him, but looked less than convincing catching the first-inning liner. In the later innings Red Sox clearly made an effort to try and take an extra base on every ball hit to right and did so successfully each time. At the plate, he finished the day 1-for-4 with three strikeouts. 

– Aaron Judge went down swinging on a high, 99 mph fastball his first time up against Crochet, and came within inches of a double down the line in left before going down swinging on a cutter in his second at-bat. Judge just missed a two-run home run in the fifth, taking a 98 mph fastball on the outer portion of the plate to right, but it went for a hard-hit (104.1 mph), 338-foot flyout to the wall. 

He laced a one-out double into the right-center gap in the eighth (115.7 mph) off Red Sox reliever Greg Weissert. He finished 1-for-4 with two strikeouts.

– Cody Bellinger notched a two-out infield single in the first off Crochet but went down looking to end the third and slammed his helmet down after disagreeing with the call on a pitch that caught the corner. He finished 2-for-4 with a strikeout, adding a single off Weissert.

– The Yankees got a runner in scoring position with one out in the second on an errant throw on a fielder’s choice, after not having a runner reach second on Friday night. After Jose Caballero worked a walk, there were two men on and two two-out for Wells, but the catcher got jammed and flared out to the shortstop just behind second.

The Yankees finished the day 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position (the lone hit not netting a run) with eight runners left on base. Stanton and pinch-hitter Jazz Chisholm Jr. had chances for a late rally with the corners covered in the eighth, but both went down swinging.

– Anthony Volpe, who has been struggling mightily at the plate, lined out to shortstop first at-bat and tried to bunt for a hit with a runner on first and one out in the fourth, and was thrown out at first. (The official scorer at The Stadium tried to save the shortstop some indignity, judging it to be a sac bunt.) He finished 0-for-3 with a strikeout looking and committed his 17th error of the year on a bad throw. He is now slashing .208/.274/.400 and again heard boos from the Bronx faithful.

– Amed Rosario added two singles in three at-bats and is now 6-for-11 in seven games in pinstripes before being lifted for a pinch hitter.

– Paul Goldschmidt, who just wears out lefties, was hitless with a strikeout his first two trips before singling up the middle off Crochet. Finished 1-for-3. He was lifted for a pinch-hit to start the eighth, with Ben Rice flying out.

– Trent Grisham went 0-for-4 with a strikeout.

– Caballero finished 0-for-2 with a strikeout and two walks.

– Wells went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. The catcher is now slashing .209/.264/.420 on the year.

– The bullpen was called upon to get 15 outs. Tim Hill got the first five, allowing two singles with a double play and two strikeouts mixed in. Ex-Met Paul Blackburn, in his Yankee debut, got the next four before allowing a runner on a leadoff walk, but quickly erased it with a 6-4-3 double play. Blackburn saved a run when he smartly backed up third on Hamilton’s two-out triple before stranding him there. 

A lead-off double off the top of the wall in right by Anthony led to two more Red Sox runs with three straight one-out singles. A two-out single plated another run before an infield hit to Volpe led to a throwing error to score another. Blackburn then compounded things by balking in a run and then hanging a sweeper to Narváez, who deposited into the visitor’s bullpen for a 414-foot two-run homer. 

Blackburn, in what may end up being his lone appearance for the Yanks, was charged with seven runs (all earned) on eight hits and two walks in 3.1 innings with a strikeout on 71 pitches (44 strikes).

Who’s the MVP? Garret Crochet

Boston’s starter was simply terrific and had just a 30 percent called-strike whiff rate, but allowed just five hard-hit balls all game.

Highlights

What’s next

The Yanks will look to avoid the four-game sweep on Sunday night. First pitch is at 7:10 p.m.

Left-hander Carlos Rodon (3.24 ERA and 1.068 WHIP in 152.2 innings) takes the ball for his 27th start of the season. He has racked up 169 strikeouts (to 60 walks) this year, good for fourth most in the American League. His 6.072 hits per nine innings are tops in the AL. 

Righty Dustin May (4.59 ERA and 1.362 WHIP in 119.2 innings) climbs the hill for the visitors, for his 22nd start of the year and fourth since arriving in Boston in a trade. May has found a bit of form with his new club, allowing five runs on 19 hits in 15.2 innings with 17 strikeouts to four walks.

Philadelphia Phillies right-handed pitcher Zack Wheeler will officially miss the rest of the season with venous thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS), the team announced Saturday. Venous TOS occurs when at least one vein under the collarbone is compressed and damaged, according to Mayo Clinic.

Wheeler has been recommended to undergo thoracic outlet decompression surgery, which generally has a 6-8 month recovery timeline, per the Phillies’ release.

The NL Cy Young candidate landed on the injured list last weekend. On Monday, he had a successful thrombolysis procedure to remove a blood clot near his right shoulder.

He then had a follow-up evaluation and received second opinions this week, according to the team.

Wheeler initially reported discomfort after an Aug. 15 start, a five-inning outing against the Washington Nationals. After feeling an abnormal heaviness in his shoulder, he received evaluations the following day. That’s when his blood clot, officially in his “right upper extremity,” was discovered.

While not often, major-league pitchers have dealt with this kind of issue before. 

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Current Texas Rangers pitcher Merrill Kelly had surgery for venous TOS in August 2020 to remove a blood clot in his shoulder. At the time, he was with the Arizona Diamondbacks. While Kelly missed the rest of that season, he came back in 2021 and made 27 starts. The year after that, he made 33 starts and registered a 3.37 ERA. He’s now seven years into his MLB career.

There are different types of TOS. Another is neurogenic TOS, and it significantly affected the career of former Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg. Neurogenic TOS is actually the more common type, according to Mayo Clinic, which describes it as a compression of a group of nerves from the spinal cord that control muscle movements and feeling in the shoulder, arm and hand, potentially leading to numbness and tingling.

In 2023, Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post wrote a story that illustrated the differences between Kelly and Strasburg’s injuries. He spoke to Robert Thompson, founder of the Center for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome at Washington University in St. Louis.

“They get lumped together, but venous TOS is typically clinically more acute,” Thompson told the Post at the time. “It presents suddenly without any preexisting symptoms. These are players who are playing normally — no pain, numbness, tingling, no nerve-type symptoms. And they suddenly get arm swelling, and there ends up being a clot in the subclavian vein.

“Neurogenic TOS is kind of a contrast because those patients typically do have somewhat long-standing symptoms, involving at least numbness and tingling, and they may have overt pain or more of an ache or fatigue. They may describe dead arm when they are throwing, particularly pitchers. And to some degree, those symptoms may have been going on a long, long time, and they’ve made compensatory changes in their posture and mechanics that may ultimately be hard to reverse. So they kind of come with a little bit more baggage.”

The sample size isn’t large for major-league pitchers and TOS, but Wheeler appears to be dealing with the more rare type of TOS, but with a less complex recovery process.

How Wheeler responds to that recovery process is yet to be seen.

As of Saturday afternoon, the Phillies are leading the NL East, six games up on the second-place New York Mets, Wheeler’s former team. Wheeler is in his sixth season with the Phillies, with whom he’s made three All-Star teams and earned a Gold Glove Award.

Fortunately for Philadelphia, it has a deep starting rotation that helped pull off a sweep of the Seattle Mariners in historic fashion this week.

Philadelphia Phillies right-handed pitcher Zack Wheeler will officially miss the rest of the season with venous thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS), the team announced Saturday. Venous TOS occurs when at least one vein under the collarbone is compressed and damaged, according to Mayo Clinic.

Wheeler has been recommended to undergo thoracic outlet decompression surgery, which generally has a 6-8 month recovery timeline, per the Phillies’ release.

The NL Cy Young candidate landed on the injured list last weekend. On Monday, he had a successful thrombolysis procedure to remove a blood clot near his right shoulder.

He then had a follow-up evaluation and received second opinions this week, according to the team.

Wheeler initially reported discomfort after an Aug. 15 start, a five-inning outing against the Washington Nationals. After feeling an abnormal heaviness in his shoulder, he received evaluations the following day. That’s when his blood clot, officially in his “right upper extremity,” was discovered.

While not often, major-league pitchers have dealt with this kind of issue before. 

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]

Current Texas Rangers pitcher Merrill Kelly had surgery for venous TOS in August 2020 to remove a blood clot in his shoulder. At the time, he was with the Arizona Diamondbacks. While Kelly missed the rest of that season, he came back in 2021 and made 27 starts. The year after that, he made 33 starts and registered a 3.37 ERA. He’s now seven years into his MLB career.

There are different types of TOS. Another is neurogenic TOS, and it significantly affected the career of former Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg. Neurogenic TOS is actually the more common type, according to Mayo Clinic, which describes it as a compression of a group of nerves from the spinal cord that control muscle movements and feeling in the shoulder, arm and hand, potentially leading to numbness and tingling.

In 2023, Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post wrote a story that illustrated the differences between Kelly and Strasburg’s injuries. He spoke to Robert Thompson, founder of the Center for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome at Washington University in St. Louis.

“They get lumped together, but venous TOS is typically clinically more acute,” Thompson told the Post at the time. “It presents suddenly without any preexisting symptoms. These are players who are playing normally — no pain, numbness, tingling, no nerve-type symptoms. And they suddenly get arm swelling, and there ends up being a clot in the subclavian vein.

“Neurogenic TOS is kind of a contrast because those patients typically do have somewhat long-standing symptoms, involving at least numbness and tingling, and they may have overt pain or more of an ache or fatigue. They may describe dead arm when they are throwing, particularly pitchers. And to some degree, those symptoms may have been going on a long, long time, and they’ve made compensatory changes in their posture and mechanics that may ultimately be hard to reverse. So they kind of come with a little bit more baggage.”

The sample size isn’t large for major-league pitchers and TOS, but Wheeler appears to be dealing with the more rare type of TOS, but with a less complex recovery process.

How Wheeler responds to that recovery process is yet to be seen.

As of Saturday afternoon, the Phillies are leading the NL East, six games up on the second-place New York Mets, Wheeler’s former team. Wheeler is in his sixth season with the Phillies, with whom he’s made three All-Star teams and earned a Gold Glove Award.

Fortunately for Philadelphia, it has a deep starting rotation that helped pull off a sweep of the Seattle Mariners in historic fashion this week.

The Mets recalled right-hander Huascar Brazoban from Triple-A before Saturday’s game against the Braves in Atlanta.

In a corresponding move, New York placed Frankie Montas on the 15-day IL with a right elbow UCL injury. The move is retroactive to Aug. 22. 

The Mets optioned Brazoban at the end of July after a string of ineffective outings. In his last appearance (July 28 against the Pares), Brazoban allowed one run on three hits and one walk in just 0.2 innings. 

“You hate to send a guy down, especially a guy who, since Day 1, he’s been huge for us,” Carlos Mendozasaid at the time. “But we’re going to use this time to continue to build him for a potential role here, because we told him you’re going to be back here.

“The plan is for him to have more of a scripted throwing program where it’s like throwing 35 pitches, maybe three days off, and at the big league level, you’re not going to be able to do that. That’s the plan with him.”

In 51.2 innings of work this season with the big league club, Brazoban has pitched to a 3.83 ERA and 1.28 WHIP.

Since being optioned to Triple-A Syracuse, Brazoban has made seven appearances. Over that span, he’s allowed eight runs on 13 hits and two walks across 10.2 innings. Most of that damage came in his third appearance with Syracuse, where he allowed seven runs in one inning of work. His last appearances (Aug. 20), Brazoban dominated, striking out four batters across two scoreless innings and allowing just one hit.

As for Montas, the injury comes at a time when his role has shifted. After returning to the team in late June after starting the season on the IL with a right lat strain, the right-hander made seven starts and was largely ineffective. He was then moved to the bullpen to facilitate the call-up of Nolan McLean, but Montas’ bullpen work was also ineffective.

In nine appearances (seven starts) with the Mets this season, Montas has pitched to a 3-2 record, a 6.28 ERA and a 1.60 WHIP.

Cade Povich is the second MLB pitcher this week to call out fans sending death threats.

The 25-year-old Baltimore Orioles left-handed starter posted on X early Saturday, revealing a disturbing screenshot of an Instagram direct message he said his wife received Friday night after he gave up four earned runs in 4 2/3 innings of a 10-7 loss to the Houston Astros.

The defeat dropped Povich to 2-7 on the year, his second in the big leagues.

“I understand that I may not have performed or have gotten the results that I, my team, or many fans may have wanted so I get the frustration. Say what you want about me in that regard. However, going out of your way to DM my wife is unacceptable and what is shown in this image is crossing the line,” Povich wrote on X.

“Me, or especially my wife, should not have to worry about our safety in the public, nonetheless church, because of how I perform on the mound.”

Povich added in his post: “I’m coming on here to say something about this because I know my family is not alone. This stuff does not belong in the game.”

Earlier this week, Seattle Mariners pitcher Tayler Saucedo and his girlfriend shared worrying screenshots of messages they each received after Saucedo’s rough outing in Philadelphia on Wednesday. Saucedo, a left-handed reliever, recorded only one out while giving up four earned runs in an 11-2 defeat to the Phillies — at the time the Mariners’ fifth straight loss that continued their setback in the AL West race.

A 32-year-old in his third season with Seattle, Saucedo is struggling mightily on the mound this year. He’s registered a 9.82 ERA in his seven appearances, with more earned runs (8) than innings pitched (7 1/3).

Saucedo took to X to post a statement Wednesday.

“I understand wanting me gone after today and this year as a whole,” Saucedo wrote. “Nobody is more disappointed with how this year has gone for me than myself. Trust me, I want to win just as much as all of you, whether I’m here or not. But messaging me this bulls*** and my girlfriend and sending this stuff is beyond baseball. 

“It’s insane how comfortable people are sending this stuff to not only me but my partner. Tell me I suck all you want that’s fine, but at some point we gotta get a grip.”

Unfortunately, these incidents aren’t isolated.

Earlier this year, Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. reported death threats made to him and his family following his May 10 start, which was just his second appearance since a 2 1/2-year layoff due to flexor tendon surgery and recovery obstacles. McCullers allowed seven earned runs to the Cincinnati Reds in 1/3 of an inning and was pulled after throwing only 36 pitches.

A report from The Athletic on June 2 revealed that a sports bettor overseas was behind the threats, sending them on social media while he was “frustrated and inebriated,” a Houston Police Department spokesperson told The Athletic.