Tommy Kahnle’s run with the Red Sox appears to be over after a rough night against the Washington Nationals helped turn a good stretch into a mess.
Boston’s Yankees-heavy roster has leaned into a strange little revenge tour this season, with Caleb Durbin, Anthony Seigler, Sonny Gray and Aroldis Chapman all producing. Kahnle couldn’t keep up.
His outing on Tuesday night was a disaster, helping the Nationals widen Boston’s deficit to seven and snapping the Red Sox’s five-game winning streak. After the game, Kahnle was removed from the mix as the team prepared for a roster shuffle that will likely send Connelly Early to the Injured List and lead to a suspension for Willson Contreras.
Kahnle’s first four games with Boston looked fine on the surface. He opened with five shutout innings across those appearances. But the bottom fell out after that, with eight earned runs allowed in his last four outings, all of them one-inning stints.
The Red Sox had been linked to Kahnle for a long time, dating back to his Yankees days. There were even rumors that Boston tried to talk him out of returning to New York when the Yankees took him from the Dodgers after Los Angeles paid for his rehab. This offseason, the pursuit finally ended when Kahnle signed a minor-league deal with Boston.
He said right away that he would stop leaning so hard on his trademark changeup, a move that raised eyebrows and made it easy to wonder whether he was heading down the same road as Chapman - the kind of late-blooming realization that seems to arrive only after a player lands in Boston.
Boston eventually brought him up after a back-and-forth over his minor-league opt out, figuring the low-risk move was worth it. It wasn’t.
Kahnle was scoreless in those first four appearances, but the next four turned ugly, including a run he allowed Friday night against the Yankees, the only run New York scored in that game. That alone would have been enough to sour the fit.
Kahnle’s place in Yankees lore was already secure. He was part of both the 2017 Baby Bombers and the 2024 World Series team, which meant an old-timers’ return would have been in the cards someday no matter what happened in Boston.
He never needed the kind of apology Chapman wanted before coming back, either. But it still fits the script that the Yankees saw one of their own wind up in Boston and the whole thing unraveled fast.
In Other News...
Yankees May Have Found Their Best Shot At A Bullpen Fix
The Yankees keep searching for answers in the middle innings, and Yovanny Cruz has surfaced as one of the more intriguing internal options. The right-hander is back from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after a stretch that included 2 1/3 scoreless innings in the majors and steady work in the minors, where he has posted a 3.18 ERA and missed enough bats to stand out in a bullpen that has been under constant stress.
For a club still navigating reliever uncertainty, Cruzs return is less about a single appearance and more about whether he can provide some needed stability at a time when every roster move gets viewed through the lens of the trade deadline. The Yankees have been trying to piece together reliable innings while other arms have wobbled, and another internal call-up gives them one more chance to find help without having to pay a bigger price on the market. [Read more 🡒]
Rays Make Another Annoying AL East Depth Move Yankees Fans Know Too Well
The Rays are back to a familiar kind of roster shuffle, bringing outfielder Austin Slater back on a minor league deal as they keep working the margins of their AL East depth chart. For a club that has long made a habit of turning over the same kind of veteran role players, Slater is the latest low-cost name to cycle through the system, and the Yankees have seen enough of that sort of move from Tampa Bay to know it can matter later.
Slater, 33, has already spent time with three organizations this year and has appeared in 28 games while struggling to get much going at the plate. He previously carved out most of his big league career with the Giants over eight seasons, and now Tampa Bay is betting there may still be a use for him if it needs a familiar bench piece down the line. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Offense Just Reached A Breaking Point Fans Feared Most
The Yankees offense has gone from shaky to flat-out alarming over a recent four-game stretch, with the kind of missed chances and empty innings that make every absence feel bigger. Without key pieces in the lineup, New York has struggled to generate much of anything against the Red Sox and Tigers, and the results have only sharpened the focus on how thin the margin is when the bats disappear.
What makes the skid feel even heavier is that the Yankees had been hanging in there until the trip through Fenway, when the problems seemed to deepen and the whole attack started to look out of sync. At the same time, the club is still waiting for clarity on its injured stars, and the questions around health and coaching decisions are starting to hang over the lineup as much as the results themselves. [Read more 🡒]