Yankees 1, Astros 5. Final. The Bombers dropped the rubber match at the Stadium Thursday night, and it wasn't particularly close by the time Josh Hader jogged in for the ninth. Hayden Wesneski outpitched Gerrit Cole, Christian Walker did the real damage with a two-run shot in the sixth, and George Lombard Jr.'s glove kept finding new ways to make a bad night worse.
Houston takes two of three in the Bronx. The Yankees are 75-58 now, four back of the Rays in the East (still nobody's idea of a crisis), and they've got four with the Red Sox starting Friday to shake this one off.
The Walker Swing
This one was 1-0 and manageable until the sixth. Isaac Paredes had scratched across a run in the third with a single that scored Peña, the kind of play that doesn't feel like much until it's the difference in a one-run game. Cole was cruising enough otherwise.
Then Walker got him. A two-run homer to right-center, Daulton Varsho aboard ahead of him, and just like that it's 3-0. By win probability, it was the single biggest swing of the night -- bigger than anything else that happened, before or after. Cole's final line ended up 6 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, and that homer was the headline run.
Walker's Redemption Arc
Give the man his due. Walker came in having gone 0-for-11 over his last several games, and he picked Yankee Stadium to snap out of it in the ugliest way possible for the home team: 3-for-4, a double, the two-run homer, two RBI. That's his 24th of the season.
Jeremy Peña added his own solo shot in the seventh off Yerry De Los Santos, his 16th, just to make sure nobody in the Bronx got comfortable. Between the two of them, that's the whole Houston offense right there (Wesneski and the pen did the rest by not letting the Yankees do anything with it).
Cole, Wesneski, and a Lineup That Never Got Going
Wesneski was the guy nobody wanted to talk about after this one, and he probably deserved better: 5 IP, 1 ER, 6 strikeouts, outdueling a former Cy Young winner on his own mound. Cole wasn't bad -- 5 strikeouts, only 1 walk -- he just made one mistake to Walker and it cost him.
The Yankees' only run came in the sixth, and it wasn't pretty. Cody Bellinger's sacrifice fly brought home Ben Rice, who'd doubled earlier in the frame (his line-drive double was actually the best offensive play of the night for New York by win probability, for whatever that's worth against a final score like this). George Lombard Jr. had tripled in that same sixth, which is worth remembering, because the rest of his night went the other direction.
The Lombard Problem
Down 4-1 in the eighth, Yainer Diaz reached on a fielding error by Lombard at short. José Caballero then airmailed a throw on the same play, and Walker scampered home with an insurance run nobody needed the Astros to have.
That's six straight games with an error for Lombard now (the kind of streak that gets its own paragraph in the box score notes, and not the good kind). He didn't dodge it after the game: "It's something I'm trying to figure out. Obviously, it's not acceptable." No excuses, no spin. Just a 21-year-old shortstop saying the quiet part out loud.
The Yankees aren't panicking over one bad stretch from a rookie -- nobody should be, this early in his career -- but it's the kind of thing that starts showing up in lineup cards if it doesn't stop soon.
Red Sox come to town Friday for four. Plenty of time to fix this before it becomes a real conversation.
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.
