The New York Yankees came into Tuesday’s game against the Detroit Tigers trailing the American League East-leading Toronto Blue Jays by just two games, and leading the Boston Red Sox in the race for the top AL Wild Card spot by just one.
They jumped out to a 2-0 lead on solo home runs by Aaron Judge in the first inning and Cody Bellinger in the fourth. A two-run shot by Tigers centerfielder Parker Meadows off of Yankees starter Will Warren in the fifth tied it up.
And then the seventh inning happened.
Worse Than ‘Just a Rough Inning’
âJust a rough inning for us,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after the game.
“I havenât seen anything like that before,â added Warren, who was pulled after six strong innings, allowing just two runs on two hits.
âSometimes this is a sport that, as you see, is not as easy as it looks,â said reliever Fernando Cruz, who started the seventh inning and opened the floodgates for the impending disaster.
Before the inning was over, Yankees relievers had allowed nine runners to score â on five hits and five walks (one intentional), a hit-batter and a wild pitch. When the game was over, after another Tigers run crossed in the eighth, the Yankees fell to a 12-2 defeat.
In one of the seventh inning’s rare occurrences, every Tigers hitter in their batting order scored a run.
Yankees Make History, but Wish They Hadn’t
How else did the Yankees’ meltdown make history?
The first eight runs of the inning scored before Yankees pitchers recorded a single out. According to Katie Sharp of Stathead.com, since play-by-play accounts of MLB games began in 1912, no other team has allowed at least one run to score as the result of a walk, a hit-by-pitch, a wild pitch and a triple all in the same inning.
Sharp also found that in the past 75 years, only one other team has seen two relief pitchers allow four or more runs in the same inning without recording an out. But Cruz and Mark Leiter Jr. achieved the dubious feat for the Yankees on Tuesday.
Yankees Just 5th Team Since 1950 to Do This
According to baseball statistician Greg Harvey, since 1950 only five teams suffered through two pitchers â starters or relievers â combining for four or more earned runs each without an out in the same inning.
The last time it happened came on June 27, 2003, when the Florida Marlins (as they were then known) gave up 14 runs in the first inning in a game at Fenway Park against the Boston Red Sox. Starter Carl Pavano and the first reliever out of the bullpen, Michael Tejera, allowed six and five runs respectively before the Red Sox made an out.
The Yankees can take some solace in the fact that the Marlins went on to win the World Series that year â beating the Yankees, in fact. So one calamitous inning is not quite the kiss of death.
It probably isn’t a record, but Cruz and Leiter also displayed very little ability to do one of the most fundamental things a pitcher needs to do â throw strikes. Cruz threw 20 pitches. Only seven registered as strikes. Leiter also managed just seven strikes, on 16 pitches in his case.
While the bullpen collapse was shocking, it may not have been surprising. The Yankees bullpen has floundered all season. The team’s bullpen ERA of 4.40 is the ninth-worst in baseball, fifth-worst in the AL.
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