The Yankees lost their sixth straight, 9-3 to the Tigers. I have to get that in the first graf (writer-speak for “paragraph”) or my ‘tors (blogtalk for “editors”) get grumpy with me. With that out of the way, let’s travel to the land of metaphor!
Do you all know what the Franklin Expedition was? In the mid-19th century England was obsessed with finding the Northwest Passage, a sailing route through treacherous ice fields in the Arctic Ocean. Such a pathway would significantly reduce the time it took to ship goods from colonial outposts in India and China, and provide the Royal Navy with a major force multiplier as the Empire enforced its rule, in the face of Russian and German opposition.
The two most technologically advanced ships that the world’s great superpower could build, the Terror and the Erebus, were designed specifically to make their way through the globe’s most dangerous waters. Captained by the seniormost officers in the fleet and crewed by some of the best engineers, navigators, and scientists that could be found in the Empire upon which the sun didn’t set.
It was a bold display of human advancement, the Apollo program of the era. The ships got trapped in the ice for a full year and everyone involved in the Expedition, some 129 men, died. Many turned to cannibalism as they entered their final, fevered days. Man proposed, and God disposed.
Cam Schlittler is a miracle of technology. He was drafted in the seventh round and was barely touching 90 in Double-A two years ago. He pretty routinely gets up to 100 mph, throws three fastballs with command over all of them. If the voting were held today, he would in all likelihood win the AL Cy Young. He’s not the Apollo program or the first real mapping of a mostly-uninhabitable zone that precluded the colonization of a nation, but he is perhaps the ur-example in the American League of what can happen in the pitching labs and bullpens and tablets of Major League facilities. Young, controllable aces are the opium and spice of the current baseball world, and the Yankees seem to have one.
(Cash)man proposed, (baseball) God disposed.
Cam didn’t get frozen in the ice, rather, he got nuked:
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Four home runs, three within four batters in the first inning. An ERA a half-run higher than it was at the start of the game, and now sits above 2.00 on the year. Cam didn’t lose the Cy Young today, we have half a season yet to go, but the worst outing of his young career came on a beautiful Tuesday night in the Bronx.
There’s not a lot else to say about this one. There were no late-inning heroics like Sunday night against Boston. Ben Rice did end an 0-18 skid with his first home run in nine days:
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Outside of that, it was what you would probably expect from Tarik Skubal pitching against what is at best the Yankee C lineup. That was the only hit the two-time Cy Young winner would allow, striking out nine in six-plus innings of work. The other Yankees runs came on a double play, and a bloop to right field from Jasson Domínguez, which suits a team that has hit 0.093 over the last five games. At least it was a fun bloop:
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I hope Cam doesn’t feel too badly, because Ryan Yarbrough somehow gave up a three-run shot in the sixth that REALLY put the game out of reach and the ball left James Outman’s bat at just 92.1 mph. THAT should make you mad.
I’m probably just grumpy because of the game and the fact I haven’t eaten yet but I hate that Dillon Dingler’s chest protector says “DING”. Same caveat but I think my increasing dislike of Spencer Jones is a little more valid, at least he only struck out twice tonight.
I’m not one for yelling at players or turning garbage cans over when things are like this. The Yankees are playing terrible baseball and they know they are. Cam Schlittler didn’t intend to give up four home runs to a fourth-place team tonight. If there’s one saving grace to all this, it’s that the stakes of a baseball season are much lower than that of an attempt to cross the Northwest Passage in a bomb vessel. To be perhaps even more optimistic, the Yankees aren’t stuck in ice, instead, they seem far more adrift, and that feels more fixable to me. After all, they got four hits today the for first time in 1,937 games, so I think they’re figuring this out.
They get a chance to salvage something out of this crappy series tomorrow and perhaps avoid a seventh consecutive loss with Will Warren going in the finale against Troy Melton. 1:35pm Eastern is your start time; wish me a Happy Canada Day because I am also tasked with writing that one up.
Box Score
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