Ryan McMahon’s bat toss wound up as the night’s loudest statement, and that said plenty about how the Yankees’ Wednesday unfolded.
New York had chances all over the place at Yankee Stadium. The lineup worked deep counts, drew walks and kept putting runners on.
Rain broke up the flow, the stadium lights even flickered out for a moment, and still the Yankees kept hovering around a breakthrough that never arrived. They stranded 11, went 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position and lost 3-1 to the Cardinals.
That left the Yankees with a series defeat after taking Tuesday’s game 2-0 behind Ryan Weathers. Instead of salvaging the three-game set, they handed St.
Louis a road series win. The Cardinals entered Wednesday at 56-58 and without a series victory since July 10-12.
They left the Bronx at 57-58 after taking two of three from a Yankees team trying to make up ground in the AL East.
The biggest chance came in the sixth inning, and it ended with McMahon slamming his bat and helmet near the plate.
New York had the bases loaded, one out and a 3-1 deficit after Jazz Chisholm Jr. had forced in the Yankees’ only run with a walk. McMahon stepped in and struck out swinging against George Soriano, ending the inning and sending the frustration spilling out.
McMahon was 0-for-2 with two walks, and both official at-bats came with runners in scoring position. In the second inning, Heliot Ramos doubled with nobody out, but the Yankees left him there when McMahon grounded out to third for the final out.
The sixth carried far more weight. Ben Rice walked, moved up on a wild pitch and reached third when catcher Iván Herrera’s throw got away.
Luis García Jr. walked. Ramos was hit by a pitch.
Soriano struck out Spencer Jones before walking Chisholm. The table was set.
McMahon couldn’t cash it in.
The Yankees spent the night making St. Louis work.
They forced five Cardinals pitchers to throw 188 pitches and reached base 13 times on four hits, eight walks and a hit batter. But the damage never came.
George Lombard Jr. singled McMahon to second in the fifth, and Paul Goldschmidt doubled in the seventh, but neither runner scored. In the eighth, Chisholm and McMahon walked with two outs before Lombard struck out against Ryne Stanek.
In the ninth, Rice drew a two-out walk and Ali Sanchez struck out against Riley O’Brien to end it.
St. Louis did its scoring in one burst, and it did it with two outs in the fifth. JJ Wetherholt lined a two-run double over Trent Grisham’s head in center, and Herrera followed with a ground-rule double.
Aaron Boone pointed to the missed chances rather than the volume of traffic.
“I thought Pallante was good, but we’ve got to come through in those situations,” Boone said. “I liked the opportunities tonight.
We had a lot of chances; it felt like we had baserunners every inning, but we’ve got to be able to deliver. We haven’t done that enough.”
Boone said it again in another way after the game.
“We got to get it done. We got to come through in those situations,” Boone said.
“Like the opportunities tonight. Had a lot of chances, felt like baserunners every inning, but we got to be able to deliver, and we haven’t done that enough.”
The numbers told the same story. The Yankees have scored two runs or fewer in six of their past seven games.
Over the three-game series, they scored 10 total runs, but seven of those came in the opener after St. Louis had already built a big lead.
The pitching staff managed a shutout Tuesday, yet the offense never matched it when the series was there to be won.
New York fell to 64-51 and 4 1/2 games behind Tampa Bay. The Yankees head into Friday’s series against the Braves, with Max Fried set to face his former club, carrying the image of McMahon’s flare-up and another game that got away.
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