About Last Night: A Nail Biter. Yankees 1, Phillies 0
- Tim Kabel
- Jul 25
- 4 min read
About Last Night: A Nail Biter. Yankees 1 – Phillies 0
By Tim Kabel
July 25, 2026
***
The Yankees opened the 10-game road trip and the three-game series against the Phillies with a dominant pitching performance by Cam Schlittler, who was pitching on four days rest after lasting only 4.1 innings in a loss to the Dodgers on Sunday.
Last night, Schlittler was in complete control of the Phillies. He pitched 7.1 innings, allowing three hits and no walks while striking out twelve. Kyle Schwarber’s double in the 4th inning was the only extra base hit the Phillies had off Schlittler. The only other Phillies player to reach second base was J T Realmuto in the 8th inning who singled and advanced to second after Gabriel Rincones was hit by a pitch. That ended Schlittler's night. Realmuto had two of the Phillies three hits off Schlittler.
The Yankees scored their only run and the only run of the game on Paul Goldschmidt’s 4th inning home run off Jesus Luzardo. Luzardo pitched an excellent game as well, but someone had to lose and thankfully it was him and not Schlittler.
The Yankees only had three hits in the game. Cody Bellinger and Jasson Dominguez had singles. Everyone else was hitless. Trent Grisham has seen his batting average drop to .222.
Brent Headrick did his usual excellent job. He came in with two on and one out in the eighth inning and after allowing a pinch-hit single to Edmundo Sosa, he got Trea Turner to line out to left field, and Kyle Schwarber to ground out. David Bednar retired the side in the 9th inning to earn his 19th save.
This was a great win. It was a wonderful way to start the road trip and the series against the Phillies. However, there are some concerns.
The Yankees offense continues to be lackluster at best. While it was enough last night, it certainly won't be that way every night. After all, Cam Schlittler is not pitching every game. Tonight, the Yankees will have Ryan Weathers on the mound and tomorrow, it will be Will Warren. The Yankees cannot rely on their pitcher shutting out the opposition every night. It's not going to happen. They need to have more consistent and explosive offense. What they have right now is not enough. It could very easily come back to bite them not only long-term but in the short-term on this road trip.
Last night was the first night of Jose Caballero dealing with the new reality. He will no longer be able to engage in his ritual of engaging the pitcher in mind games over engagement. Caballero has been told that he can no longer wait until the last second to engage the pitcher. This was an inevitable move. Other teams were beginning to get increasingly upset with Caballero and there were a few altercations over it. Honestly, it is for the best that the league stepped in. Otherwise, it would have become a bigger problem. Now, if the Yankees had a manager who actually managed the team, it would have been a different story. Ideally, the Yankees manager would have stepped in and told Caballero to knock off the shenanigans and to channel his energy into trying to get hits and steal bases. That is what the Yankees need him to do.
Last night was a good start to the road trip and to the series against the Phillies. The true test will be whenever Cam Schlittler is not on the mound.
A Few Tidbits:
· The Yankees are now 22-22 since June first.
· Cam Schlittler threw 68 of his 99 pitches for strikes.
· Schlitter is now 10-6 and has lowered his ERA to 2.07. He has 157 strikeouts and 25 walks in 130 innings.
· The Red Sox are 24-6 in their last 30 games.
· Former Yankee Anthony Seigler is batting .273 for the Red Sox this season.
· George Lombard, junior had another hit for Scranton last night. He is now batting.261 for the season after a slow start. I would be willing to wager that he will be playing on the Major League team on or before August 4th.
· On July 24th, 1966, Mickey Mantle hit the 493rd home run of his career at Yankee Stadium, tying Lou Gehrig for 2nd place on the franchise's all-time home run list. I wonder who was in first place.
· On July 24th, 1983, the infamous pine tar game was played in which George Brett hit a 9th inning go-ahead home run off Goose Gossage but was called out because the pine tar on his bat exceeded the allowed limit. Brett then had a conniption and had to be restrained. Ultimately, the call was protested and overturned, and the game was completed a month later with the Royals winning.
***
Tonight, the Yankees will play the second game of the three-game series against the Phillies at 6:05 PM at Citizens Bank Park. Ryan Weathers, (3-7, 4.40 ERA) will pitch for the Yankees. The Phillies have not named a starter. Sadly, I would give the edge to the Phillies starter.
as for last night's game......
mama told me there'd be days like this
some days you eat the bear, some nights the bear eats you.
great pitching happens.
and hitters look hapless when it does.
when few fat pitches are served up in a game, and there is some idea floating around that that few meatballs are served by the best starters on the best teams, hits also are few.
it's advisable to make the most of the few treats on the menu.
it's also good to take notice of the paucity of offense and allow a note of concern concerning that paucity.
the Yankee offense really, really, really could benefit from additional right-handed power hitting.
there was a time,…
I had a sort of a suspicion that the Yankees' offense was constructed around the prodigious power-hitting of the two right-handed giants
and that removing both from the line-up would not only but a damper of scoring, but also cause the offense to become far more vulnerable to left-handed pitching.
having both big batters on the IL, and also being forced to forego the services of the two quite accomplished left-handed starters Fried and Rodon, was quite the strain upon the team
and the team fell on tough times.
it has been just as I had feared,
without four of the teams' best=performing players,
the team performed less well.
MLB's treatment of Caballero and the Yankees is outrageous. MLB created a detailed set of rules for the pitch clock, one of which is that the batter has to be in the box at 8 seconds and make eye contact with the pitcher. Caballero does that. There is a rule against "deception," but what deception is Caballero practicing? The pitcher can see he's looking down and/or not in the box.
So MLB doesn't like the result of the rule that it wrote. So change the rule! Don't change the meaning of words to twist the rule into providing the result you want. And if you're actually going to go about perverting the language of a rule, announce your perversions bef…
A win is a win. BUT, 3 hits, 12Ks and 0-3 risp is really bad.
Domínguez and Volpe, two of the fastest runners on this team lead off the fifth with singles. Do we bunt, do we hit-and-run, do we steal, do we score? No is the answer to all of these questions!