Yankees wrecked by Dodgers, Teoscar Hernandez in ugly blowout loss

MLB

By Greg Joyce

It may only last a few days — for now, anyway — but life without Juan Soto has not been kind to the Yankees.

With their star left-handed bat sidelined a second straight game because of forearm inflammation, the Yankees had another quiet night offensively and looked flat overall on the way to dropping just their third series of the season.

After the Yankees wasted some early chances in what was then a tight game, the night unraveled late and got ugly as they fell to the Dodgers, 11-3, on Saturday in front of a sellout crowd of 48,274.

The Dodgers (41-25) blew the game open in the eighth inning, which they entered with a 4-2 lead.

Two walks from Tommy Kahnle and another fielding error from Gleyber Torres loaded the bases for Teoscar Hernández, who crushed his second home run of the night, this one a grand slam to put the Dodgers ahead 8-2.

By the end of the game, the Yankees (45-21) needed Oswaldo Cabrera to record the final out of the ninth inning for a scuffling Dennis Santana, though not before the utility man walked in a run.

”[Soto’s absence] is a big part [of the last two games] — I’m not going to say it’s not,” Alex Verdugo said. “But at the end of the day, we’ve had our opportunities with him out of the lineup to win. We just haven’t cashed in. That’s what good teams do, good pitching teams do, they buckle down. When it’s two outs, runners in scoring position, they buckle down. We’re seeing that right now, but at the end of the day, I thought today was a lot closer than what the score dictated toward the end.”

The Yankees went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base in a frustrating night for the offense.

After going scoreless for the first 10 innings Friday night on the way to a 2-1, 11-inning loss, the Yankees scored a pair of early runs Saturday off right-hander Gavin Stone, but then went silent before Aaron Judge clubbed his second home run of the game in the ninth inning, his MLB-leading 23rd of the season.

After winning 16 of their first 20 series of the season, the Yankees will try to avoid their first sweep of the year Sunday, giving the ball to red-hot right-hander Luis Gil.

The better news for the Yankees was that Soto felt “way better” Saturday as he began to ramp up his baseball activities.

The plan is for Soto to try to hit in the cage Sunday and see how he feels, though manager Aaron Boone said before the game that the Yankees were leaning toward giving Soto “a couple” more days to allow the inflammation to subside.

”It’s just a presence, right?” Verdugo said of Soto. “Being able to work at-bats, it’s a good way to see all the guy’s pitches early. Obviously what Soto does, he drives the ball everywhere. It’s a big bat out for us right now but at the end of the day, we always know when one guy’s down, the next guy’s got to step up.”

In Soto’s absence, Verdugo has bumped up to batting second.

But that weakens the middle of the lineup as the Yankees’ four through six hitters (Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Gleyber Torres) have gone 1-for-26 with a walk in the first two games of the series.

Meanwhile, Nestor Cortes was not as sharp as he typically has been at Yankee Stadium this season, getting tagged for a pair of home runs and four runs (tying a season-high) across 5 ¹/₃ innings.

He avoided any big innings but gave up single runs in the second, third, fifth and sixth.

”I thought I executed a lot of pitches, I just didn’t get the results I wanted,” said Cortes, who was pulled with a 1-0 count with runners on the corners after a mixup in which Boone said the Yankees called for a pickoff but the lefty heard a fastball called.

Either way, Michael Tonkin relieved Cortes and got a ground ball for the second out, but it scored Freddie Freeman — who had doubled on a line drive that went over the head of Verdugo, the normally reliable left fielder who started in on the ball — from third to extend the Dodgers’ lead to 4-2.

The Yankees then loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the inning, but Giancarlo Stanton’s fly ball fell just short on the center-field warning track, summing up their night in one swing.