Yanks Drop Series, Lose 5-1 To Astros

By Andy Singer

August 28th, 2026

The Big Story

It feels like the Yankees should have come away with more from this series. The Yankee offense, so good through the first two games of this series, again managed to put runners in scoring position with some frequency last night, but was unable to capitalize at all. With runners in scoring position, the Yankees went 0-9. The only run scored on a Cody Bellinger sac fly that scored Ben Rice in the bottom of the 6th inning. Beyond that, the offense struck out 11 times; 4 of those strikeouts were with runners in scoring position.

This series feels like a missed opportunity. The Rays are 5-5 in their last 10 games. Both last night's game and the first game against the Astros were very winnable ballgames. With a couple of plays either way, we'd be talking about a sweep heading into a critical series against Boston instead of a team that's lost 2 of its last 3. For a team looking to come back and win the AL East over the last month of the season, this isn't a great start.

Bad News, Worse Bullpen

It's almost like the Baseball Gods needed to remind Brian Cashman why removing bullpen depth at the trade deadline was a bad idea. Fernando Cruz has pitched poorly for a few weeks, and now we know why. Cruz admitted that he has been pitching through elbow pain, something that he (and countless pitchers before him) have done in the past, until it became too much to bear the other night. The MRI showed a partially torn UCL, one that Cruz will try to rehab, but reading between the lines of the Yankees' updates, it doesn't sound like the team is optimistic he'll avoid surgery. Cruz is almost certainly done for the season.

What did that mean for last night's game? It means that after Gerrit Cole, we watched Justin Tropa and Yerry De Los Santos pitch in a 2-run ballgame. Predictably, the Yankees lost by 4 runs.

This one isn't on Boone. He's leaned so heavily on his highest leverage arms all year that he has to be able to turn to his middle relievers occasionally. As injuries pile up, those middle relivers are increasingly journeymen who don't belong in a championship bullpen. In this game, it meant that the game was effectively over when Cole left following the 6th inning.

That said, I have to give a little credit to Justin Tropa. He's not someone I necessarily want in the bullpen right now, but his stuff seemed to play better than I would have expected. His fastball (sinker and his new cutter) had more life than it had in the video I watched from earlier this season, and he generated whiffs on 38% of the Astros' swings. That's pretty darn good, and something I'd like to watch moving forward.

The Short Porch Giveth, The Short Porch Taketh

Gerrit Cole was 1 out away from finishing 6 innings with 6 strikeouts and just 1 run allowed. He was genuinely excellent all night, showing vintage stuff and very solid command of all of his offerings. Christian Walker was able to get his arms extended on a breaking ball that hung just a bit on the outside corner. In every stadium in MLB, that ball is a deep fly out to end the inning...except one: Yankee Stadium. The ball came straight down just barely into the first row of the short porch.

I'm sure Cole was furious when he got into the dugout. It's an awful feeling as a pitcher to know you executed and could have been out of an inning only to watch a ball just clear the wall. That said, both teams played at the same field, and it's not like the Yankees haven't found a way to capitalize on the short porch in recent games.

Cole's final line was still solid, with 6 innings of 3-run ball, but the short porch helped give Cole the loss in this one.

Two For The Price Of One

Just when it looked like Lombard Jr.'s awful defensive streak would come to an end, the Yankees turned one error into a spectacular misplay. In the 8th inning, with Christian Walker on 2B, Diaz hit a choppy grounder to SS. It should have been the 3rd out of the inning. Instead, as we've seen so many times recently, Lombard misjudged the ball's final hop, and the ball clanked off of the heel of his glove into the air.

This is where the bad turned ugly. Instead of eating it with Diaz almost surely safe at 1B, Caballero picked the ball out of the air and threw wildly over the first baseman's head nearly into the crowd, allowing Walker to score. It was one of the ugliest defensive plays I've seen this season from the Yankees, and that's really saying something.

Defensive slumps happen, just like they do on offense. Lombard is very clearly talented in the field. It's also equally obvious that the game is really speeding up on him in the field right now. He over-charged the ball, and his internal clock was running too fast. Lombard's arm affords him the ability to sit back a bit more on balls like that, particularly with a runner like Diaz on the basepaths. I'm not sure if it's time to give Lombard a quick breather, but I do know a good coaching staff would sit Lombard down and get him to relax a bit before this becomes a mental hurdle he can't overcome.

On The Bright Side

A few quick positive notes:

• Lombard hit his first big league triple. He smoked it to left-center field. Off the bat, I thought it had a chance to get out. According to Statcast, it would have been a homer at 2/3 of the parks in the league.

• Ben Rice went 2-4. It looks like a switch flipped for him in the middle of the Baltimore series. Since August 19th, Rice has a 1.011 OPS with 7 strikeouts and 7 walks. I think having Luis Garcia Jr. at the top of the lineup with him has helped, but I also can't help but wonder if Rice has been nursing something. His swings look more like they did in the first half of the season over the last few days.

• Jazz Chisholm Jr. seems a lot more like the guy I expected him to be over the last few days. He went 1-2 with a walk and 2 stolen bases last night and pushed his OPS over .710 for the season. I'll forgive the rest of his season if he gets scorching hot in September and October.

• Gerrit Cole continues to look like the guy who won the Cy Young award a few years ago. I'm impressed by how good he's looked since returning from TJS.

Looking Ahead

The Yankees start a 4-game series with the Boston Red Sox tonight in a series with huge implications for the AL East standings. Of course, Friday night's game featuring Cam Schlittler is on Apple TV, so I won't see it. For those of you with Apple TV, let me know how the game goes.