Yanks Split Doubleheader With Dodgers

By Andy Singer

July 19th, 2026

It was the best of games, it was the worst of games...and were I getting paid by the word like Dickens, I'd wax poetic about the similarities and differences between the two games, but lucky for all of you, I am not paid by the word. Below, I'll give you a quick summary of the games with more detailed thoughts in bullet-point form below the summaries.

Game 1 featured the matchup we thought we'd get on Sunday evening before Saturday's rain storm condensed 2/3 of the series into Sunday: Cam Schlittler vs Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Early on, I really expected it to be an absolute classic pitcher's duel, as Schlittler struck out the side in the first inning while Yamamoto worked the black of the plate with a dizzying mix of pitches and velocity. Sadly, the Yankees' own mistakes and Schlittler's inability to locate the curveball really came back to bite them as the Dodgers held a small lead deep into the game. The Yankees kept the game close until Aaron Boone inexplicably went to Jake Bird in a tight game at the top of the 8th inning. What began as a 3-1 Dodger lead quickly became an 8-1 foregone conclusion as Bird turned it into a no-doubt win for the Dodgers. Trent Grisham's 4th inning screaming homer was the lone blemish to that point for the Yankees. Once the wind was out of their sails, Jazz and Volpe manufactured a run with some help from the sun to close the gap to 8-2, but the damage was done, and the Yankees lost the game and the series.

Game 2 of the doubleheader was surprisingly a bullpen game. While the Yankees hadn't officially announced a starter for the game, the rumor (that all of the Yankee beat writers seemed to believe as fact) was that Elmer Rodriguez would start for the Yankees. Instead, the Yankees turned to a bullpen game, initially featuring Ryan Yarbrough, Paul Blackburn, and Brent Headrick to fill a starter's share of innings. The 3 pitchers combined for 7 innings, just 3 hits, 1 walk, and 5 strikeouts. Blackburn and Headrick were particularly dominant, combining for 4.1 innings, 2 baserunners allowed, and 4 strikeouts. None of those pitchers seemed to break a sweat against the Dodgers' lineup. The Yankees struck early on offense, as Goldschmidt hit a softly hit double down the right field line and Bellinger followed up with a single ripped up the middle off of a hanging slider from Will Klein with two outs.

The Yanks, intent to keep things interesting, couldn't allow 1 run to be enough, though. Fernando Cruz didn't look anywhere near as dominant as he'd been earlier this season, and allowed Tommy Edman to homer to the short porch in RF on a flat splitter. David Bednar relieved Cruz and managed to escape the jam without any further damage, including an incredibly gutsy sequence that ended with Ohtani swinging through a hard splitter for a strikeout, and Bednar's first out overall.

Then, in the bottom of the 8th inning, Jazz Chisholm continued his flair for the dramatic. On a second-pitch low 97 MPH fastball, Jazz sat back and smacked the ball to left-center, just clearing the wall to give the Yankees the 2-1 lead. Bednar continued to prove that he can be a lockdown closer by finishing the game, making the weekend a little easier to swallow. I don't think I could have handled it if the Yankees got swept by the Dodgers this weekend.

And now, let's get to some more thoughts about each game:

Game 1 Thoughts:

• Cam Schlittler striking out the side in the first inning was absolutely electric.

• The Yankees’ utter unwillingness to work at-bats against Yamamoto was equally frustrating.

• Schlittler’s curveball looked decidedly different today. Harder and sharper, but he didn’t spot it well. Learning to locate it better is going to make a huge difference for Schlittler as guys are getting better swings against his collection of fastballs. Schlittler’s swinging strike rate on his 4-seam fastball went through the roof today just because the Dodgers needed to think about the curveball.

• Still, not Schlittler’s best outing by a long-shot.

• Max Schuemann is a very good defensive infielder. He’s capable of playing the outfield, but a day game at Yankee Stadium when the sun is high is an entirely different matter. Schlittler was rolling until a lazy fly ball to RF turned into a double. It forced Schlittler to throw too many pitches in the 2nd inning, and Schlittler seemed to lose momentum prior to a 2-run 3rd inning. Losing momentum is on Schlittler, but missing a can of corn in RF made Schlittler throw way too many pitches beyond what should have been needed. Maybe DH’ing Dominguez and playing an infielder in RF was the wrong call…

• Before anyone says anything, Jazz was not at fault there. Jazz shouldn’t be running out the outfield on a can of corn in mid-RF, so I don’t blame him for staying on the infield dirt.

• Jazz’s play to make an out on Ohtani’s hard liner off of Rice’s glove was really impressive. Volpe also made a nice diving stop in the 2nd inning to save a run. The team is capable of playing good defense, but it needs way more consistency.

• Jake Bird no longer deserves a roster spot. He entered the game, and I knew where things were headed. I wrote this before the game even got away from him; if I knew it, the Yankees should have.

• Oh, and Schuemann’s dive was appropriate; a real outfielder would have gotten a better jump on that fly ball in the 8th and snared it on the run. That would have given Bird a runner on 1st or 2nd with two outs as opposed to 2nd and 3rd with one out.

• It sounds like I’m beating up on Schuemann, but I’m not; I wish they’d quit playing him out of position, but he deserves to play. He’s taking some of the best at-bats on the team. He hit two just-miss fly balls in his first two at-bats and a screaming liner hit right at Pages in CF in his 3rd AB with a runner in scoring position. Schuemann’s first two batted balls in play were over 92 MPH; his 3rd was over 100 MPH. In all cases, he took great at-bats, working the pitcher and putting himself in position to get hittable pitches. Those 3 balls didn’t find grass or the stands, but when the quality of the at-bats and contact are that good, eventually good things come.

• As I’m writing this, Bird has allowed the game to be broken wide open. Let any one of Ben Hess, Ben Grable, Elmer Rodriguez, or Yovanny Cruz take that spot for now. The Yankees have made it clear they don’t think Cruz can stick at the big league level, but it’s fairly obvious that Bird won’t either, so at least give him a look.

• On the flip side, I thought Angel Chivilli has looked fantastic since returning to the big leagues. He might be a very good middle reliever for this team. A lot of people knocked this pickup this offseason, but it looks like it might be paying some dividends.

• You know it’s bad when you feel relieved when the Yanks squeak by the 8th inning having only allowed 5 runs. With Bird and Doval on the hill, it could have been so much worse.

• The Yanks were right in it to get wins in the first two games of this series. The talent between the two rosters appears shockingly close, and this is a Yankee roster playing without Aaron Judge. The counterargument to that is that the lack of fundamentals and poor coaching/management remains a core difference between these two clubs. I would argue that Aaron Boone and the coaching staff are on the hook for the loss in Game 1, and while they didn’t lose Game 2 themselves, they didn’t put the team in the best positions to win either. That’s an incredible indictment in Year 9 of Aaron Boone’s tenure. The greatest argument against Brian Cashman retaining his job as GM isn’t roster construction; it’s his insistence that Aaron Boone is doing a great job.

Game 2 Thoughts:

• Aaron Boone was predictably curt in his press conference prior to the game. Interestingly, multiple writers and commentators asked Boone to confirm that Elmer Rodriguez would start the third game of the series later that evening, and he refused. Boone’s response was as telling as I’ve ever seen in a Boone press conference, as even Schlittler alluded to Elmer’s proposed start in the final game of the series. It says a lot about how Boone thinks about Rodriguez’s capability as an MLB starter right now.

• I did not feel good at all about a bullpen game heading into this evening. I thought at least seeing if Rodriguez could give you 3-4 good innings was the better baseball decision.

• The bullpen did everything they could to prove me wrong tonight.

• I’ve been really hard on Ryan Yarbrough this season, and he did everything he could tonight to prove me wrong. Good for him; I thought he gave the Yankees everything he could tonight. I couldn’t be happier to be wrong.

• Blackburn and Headrick looked unhittable tonight. When Boone turned to Bird in the afternoon game, I was stunned that Blackburn was left in the bullpen. We now know that there was clearly an internal argument going on about how the night game would be handled on the mound, but I still think Blackburn or Headrick would have kept that game in winnable shape. Blackburn and Headrick have proven to be good enough against some of the most potent lineups in baseball in recent weeks, and tonight only further added to that reputation. I think both are legitimately good relievers.

• Cruz looked terribly off tonight, and Boone was right to give him a quick hook.

• Wow, Bednar was fantastic tonight. He really showed some serious intestinal fortitude, particularly in the Ohtani at-bat in the 8th inning. Bednar trusted all of his stuff, even flipping a good curveball in there to keep Ohtani off-balance. When he struck Ohtani out on the splitter that tailed away, I knew Bednar would close it out if the Yankees could just get one more run…

• What a great piece of hitting by Jazz in the 8th inning. He’s been better than most have acknowledged, but he has yet to get molten hot like he usually does at least once per season. I said in my last post that I expected that hot streak to come in the 2nd half. I think we’re there. Jazz has been a dead-pull hitter, but he sat back and let the barrel sit in the zone forever to tattoo a shot over the wall in left-center. Only a comfortable hitter can do that, and Jazz showed patience and fantastic hand strength to help will the Yankees to a win. I think it was my favorite moment of the season so far. I cheered so loudly that I’m hoarse right now.

• I might’ve been wrong about Ryan McMahon. Not counting his double in the 2nd game, he’s hit to the tune of a .765 OPS since the calendar turned to June. He’s finally controlling the barrel, finding ways to pull balls with power occasionally, while finding ways to get the ball to drop when he hits to the opposite field. He doesn’t walk nearly enough, but he’s making a lot more good contact. We saw it in his 8th inning double, even if the Yankees had nothing in the way of runs to show for it.

• Bednar showed serious resolve to close it out in the 9th inning. The Yankees have their closer. I’m not opposed to getting the best reliever they can grab, but Bednar is a seriously good closer now that he’s over the fatigue the WBC clearly caused.

Conclusion

It looked like this weekend was going to be a disaster, but the bullpen and Jazz Chisholm kept the Yankees from falling into serious despair. Frankly, these two teams looked fairly evenly matched all weekend, and the Yanks were without Aaron Judge and some key rotation/bullpen arms. I genuinely believe that coaching and roster management mistakes led to 1 or both losses this weekend. The Yankees have to get better at the trade deadline if for no other reason than they have to overcome poor in-game management and coaching.

It was disappointing to lose 2 games to the Dodgers, but I think this weekend also showed that the Yankees were not outclassed by the best team in baseball on talent, which is encouraging.

Things don't get any easier this week, as the Yankees enter a tough stretch of schedule. The Yankees will face off in a series against the surprisingly decent Pirates on Monday night. Let's see if they can generate some momentum.