OAKLAND — Just as it looked like the Yankees’ bats were heating up after a tepid start to the second half, the offense fell flat on Saturday night.
After recording 29 hits over the first two contests of this weekend’s four-game series at the Oakland Coliseum, the Yankees mustered only one knock in a 3-2 loss to the A’s, an 11-inning affair that snapped their five-game winning streak . The Yanks also missed a chance to increase their American League East lead and to gain ground in the race for the AL pennant, as the Rays, Blue Jays and Astros all lost Saturday.
Although three New York batters reached base over the first nine innings, Oakland’s defense erased each of them, allowing A’s pitching to face the minimum to that point. It was the first time the Yankees sent only 27 batters to the plate through nine innings since Sept. 2, 1997 — and it was only the sixth time that’s happened in franchise history.
Oswaldo Cabrera, the Yankees’ No. 14 prospect, per MLB Pipeline, who was coming off back-to-back three-hit games, tallied New York’s lone knock of the game, leading off the sixth inning with a double to break up A’s right-hander Adam Oller’s no-hit bid.
“It was a challenge for us,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Oller kind of held us down and kept us in check, and we just weren’t able to mount much.”
Oller, who was 2-6 with a 6.41 ERA over 16 games (11 starts) in his rookie season entering Saturday, did not seem like an obvious candidate to stymie the hot-hitting Yankees. But he found a groove while blanking New York for eight innings.
“We couldn’t muster much,” Boone said. “He was dictating counts, he was getting ahead. We hit a few balls hard off him, but weren’t able to generate much.”
The game may not have gone to extras if not for the efforts of Yankees right-hander Domingo Germán, who turned in the longest start of his career with 7 2/3 scoreless innings. Germán took a no-hit bid of his own into the sixth, limiting the A’s to three hits on the night.
Germán, who missed time early in the season with a right shoulder injury, has been effective in eight starts this season. His dominant outing extended his streak of games in which he’s allowed three or fewer runs to seven, the second longest of his career. He had a streak of nine such starts from April 22-June 6, 2021.
“When you’re coming back from an injury and you’ve been gone for quite some time, you have doubts because you don’t know how you’re going to come back,” Germán said through an interpreter. “But the work that I’ve been able to do in between starts… working on the sharpness of the pitches, being able to mature as a pitcher, I think, has allowed me to get the results from all that work, and I think every outing I’ve been able to do that.”
In the end, a strong night of pitching wasn’t enough for the Yankees, as the A’s eventually pulled out the win on two uncharacteristic New York mistakes. Right-hander Ron Marinaccio — who had allowed only one run over 27 1/3 innings dating back to May 22 — gave up a game-tying pinch-hit two-run homer to Oakland’s Stephen Vogt in the 10th. Then, the A’s walked it off in the 11th on a throwing error from reliable defender DJ LeMahieu.
Going into this series against the A’s, whose 47-81 record ranks last in the AL, expectations were high for the Yankees to dominate. And although they did in the first two games, getting one-hit by a last-place team was a shock to their system.
Did those high expectations get in the Yankees’ heads?
“I don’t feel like anyone feels that kind of pressure,” LeMahieu said. “It doesn’t really matter who we play. We just didn’t take care of business like we’re capable of.”
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