The Yankees kept putting themselves in position to control Tuesday night, and Houston kept taking it back.
New York jumped ahead three different times against the Astros, only to watch those leads disappear in a 9-7 loss at Yankee Stadium. Cody Bellinger and Luis Garcia Jr. supplied the power, but every time the Yankees landed a punch, Houston answered.
By the eighth inning, the game had become about more than bats. The biggest question was how both managers would handle the highest-pressure spots, and Aaron Boone’s choices drew the attention.
Joe Espada pushed his buttons aggressively. Boone, on three separate occasions, chose to stay put.
The Yankees’ night unraveled after they led 6-5 entering the eighth. Diaz tied it with his second solo homer of the game, then Pena singled, Alvarez tripled him home and Isaac Paredes added an RBI single to make it 8-6 Houston.
New York answered right away. Spencer Jones doubled, Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled him in, and suddenly it was 8-7 with nobody out.
Then Boone stuck with Austin Wells.
Wells had gone 0-for-2 with a walk by that point and entered the night batting .179 with a .274 on-base percentage, .297 slugging percentage and .571 OPS. In his previous 10 games from Aug. 13 through Aug. 23, he was 4-for-24 with no home runs and two RBIs.
Boone had Goldschmidt, Heliot Ramos, Amed Rosario and Ali Sanchez on the bench, but he let Wells hit against right-hander Bryan Abreu. Wells grounded into a double play.
It was not a simple call on paper. Goldschmidt and Ramos do their best work against left-handers, and pinch-hitting for Wells would have forced Boone to sort out the catching situation for the ninth.
Still, the Yankees were down one run, had nobody out and had the tying run on base. Boone went with the bat already in the box, and Houston got the outs.
A few pitches later came another opportunity, and this one was much more obvious.
Jose Caballero singled with two outs, and Espada immediately went to Josh Hader to face Trent Grisham. It was only Hader’s second outing of more than three outs this season, but Houston wanted four outs from him with the tying run aboard.
Boone had a bench built to attack that matchup. Goldschmidt entered with a .993 OPS in 152 plate appearances against left-handed pitching.
Ramos had a .769 OPS against lefties, compared with .653 against right-handers. Grisham was at .725 OPS versus southpaws.
Boone kept both right-handed hitters on the bench. Hader struck out Grisham to end the inning, then came back for the ninth and finished the four-out save, his 19th in 19 chances.
The earliest of Boone’s choices may have been the most glaring.
After Diaz tied the game, Headrick got another out before Pena singled. With two outs, Pena on first and second base open, Alvarez stepped in. Boone did not intentionally walk him.
That meant giving a swing to a hitter who entered Tuesday with a .320 batting average, .436 on-base percentage, .613 slugging percentage and a major league-leading 1.050 OPS. He also had 36 home runs and 90 RBIs. Two days earlier, Oakland intentionally walked Alvarez three times in one game, and the third gave him 28 intentional walks on the season, breaking Jeff Bagwell’s Astros franchise record of 27 set in 1997.
Alvarez made the Yankees pay right away, driving Headrick’s first pitch into the right-center-field gap for a go-ahead triple, his first since July 21, 2024. Paredes then singled him home. An intentional walk would not have guaranteed a clean inning, but Boone still chose to challenge one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters in a tied game in the eighth.
After the loss, Boone did address Headrick, though not the Wells, Grisham or Alvarez decisions in the publicly available postgame comments reviewed. He said he had been cautious with the left-hander because of his workload. Tuesday was Headrick’s 68th appearance, second-most in the majors, and he had allowed only three runs over his previous 21 outings before being charged with three earned runs in two-thirds of an inning.
“They beat our guys tonight, so you got to give them some credit,” Boone said.
The contrast was plain. Espada treated the eighth like a window that might close fast.
Boone kept trusting the matchup already in front of him. On a night when Houston erased three leads and Diaz powered the comeback with two home runs, those calls became part of the story the Yankees were left to explain.
New York fell to 74-57, stayed 3.5 games behind Tampa Bay in the American League East and watched Boston move within 1.5 games of them for the American League’s top wild-card spot. The three-game series continues Wednesday.
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