Spencer Jones said "I made it" before the first pitch. By the time Jacob Misiorowski was done with him, it probably felt less like arrival and more like orientation week.
The New York Yankees lost 6-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field on Friday night -- a clean shutout built on a four-run second inning and 11 strikeouts from a 24-year-old righty who didn't leave New York with much to argue about. Misiorowski threw six. Shane Drohan threw three. The Brewers struck out 14 Yankees combined. The offense had 3 hits -- all singles.
The Second Inning Did It
Max Fried let the second inning get away from him. Rengifo walked twice in the frame, Sánchez singled, and with the bases full the middle of the Milwaukee order put together four hits that scored four runs -- no home runs, nothing spectacular, just four singles and a groundout that somehow also drove in a run.
Lockridge singled Sánchez home to make it 0-1. Sal Frelick singled Vaughn home for 0-2. Joey Ortiz grounded into a force out, but Rengifo scored anyway for 0-3. Jackson Chourio singled home Lockridge to close it at 0-4. (That's the infuriating way to give up a crooked number -- you can rationalize a two-run homer. Four straight hitters putting the barrel on it is harder to explain away.)
Fried wasn't done in the third either. Lockridge singled again -- his second single of the night -- to score Vaughn for 0-5. Two innings in and the Yankees were staring at a five-run deficit against a Brewers pitching staff that wasn't going to give any of it back.
What Misiorowski Was Doing
To understand how the offense ended up at 3 hits, you have to see what Misiorowski was throwing. Eleven strikeouts in six innings. Two hits allowed. Zero runs. He sat around 103 miles per hour and had enough off it to keep the lineup off-balance all night.
Aaron Judge went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts. Jazz Chisholm Jr. struck out twice. Austin Wells struck out twice. Ben Rice struck out twice. The only Yankee who looked like he'd seen a pitcher recently was José Caballero, who went 2-for-3 -- both singles, no runs scored, the team's lone multi-hit night. (The other eight guys were largely on their own out there.)
Drohan closed it with 3 clean innings -- 1 hit, 3 strikeouts, nobody home. Fourteen strikeouts on the board when it was over. Misiorowski wins, Drohan saves it.
Jones and Castro Walk In
Spencer Jones went 0-for-2 with a walk and two strikeouts in his big-league debut, batting sixth. Both strikeouts came against Misiorowski -- which, given what Misiorowski did to the other eight guys in the lineup, is context worth having. The walk was real. There's something in that, even if this wasn't the debut he imagined when the call came in Friday morning.
Kervin Castro also debuted the same night. He pitched two innings out of the pen and gave up the sixth run in the seventh when William Contreras singled home Joey Ortiz to make it 0-6. Not the evening either of them drew up, but they're in the major leagues now.
Fried Takes the L
Six innings, six hits, five earned runs, three walks, five strikeouts. The loss goes to Fried, and it was mostly the second inning -- a frame that didn't need to become a five-alarm situation and did anyway. He ate innings after that, which you need your starter to do when you're down five, but the offense didn't have an answer for what Milwaukee put on the mound.
Castro absorbed the final run in the seventh. Final: Brewers 6, Yankees 0.
The club drops to 26-14, still in first in the AL East while Tampa Bay sits at 25-13. This is game 1 of a series in Milwaukee. Two more games to play.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
