The Yankees got hit from every direction Saturday, and by the end of the 12-2 loss to the Mets, the biggest swing of the afternoon may not have come from a bat at all. It came from Aaron Boone’s lineup card.
On a night when the Mets launched six home runs at Yankee Stadium and turned the Subway Series into a blowout, the Yankees left one of their hottest hitters on the bench against left-hander Zac Thornton. That choice looked standard at first. By the final out, it was the kind of decision that invites a second guess.
The game itself unraveled fast. Francisco Lindor opened with a home run, Luis Torrens added another in the second, and Carson Benge followed in the third.
Gerrit Cole took the brunt of it, eventually allowing five runs and nine hits in 4 1/3 innings. By the time Benge singled home Juan Soto in the fifth, Cole was finished.
New York had a brief response in the fourth. Paul Goldschmidt doubled, then scored on a Cody Bellinger RBI single to cut it to 4-1.
Bellinger later went deep himself. But that was about it for the Yankees offense, and Thornton made sure there was no real rally to build on.
The Mets rookie held New York to two runs and five hits over seven innings.
The late innings only made the final score uglier. Lindor crushed an eighth-inning grand slam off Bradley Hanner, and Jared Young added a solo homer in the ninth. The six home runs were a Subway Series record against Yankees pitching, and the defeat dropped New York to 85-63.
That backdrop is what made the lineup decision so noticeable. Boone kept Luis Garcia Jr. on the bench because Thornton was starting, sticking with the platoon arrangement the Yankees have used since acquiring Garcia at the trade deadline.
Against lefties, Garcia sits and Goldschmidt plays. Saturday followed that script.
The logic was clear enough on paper. Garcia has hit roughly .244 with a .652 OPS against left-handed pitching this season, while Goldschmidt has produced a .315 average with a .603 slugging mark against lefties. Boone and the Yankees built the plan for exactly that kind of matchup.
“With as left-handed as we are, [we wanted] to get another guy that really is still at this point in his career wearing out left-handed pitching,” Boone said.
But Garcia has been too hot to ignore. He came into Saturday as one of the Yankees’ most dangerous bats behind Aaron Judge, and his recent stretch made the matchup decision feel a lot less automatic.
He had just reached 30 home runs, was hitting .314 over his previous 15 games, and carried an .886 OPS since joining the Yankees. In September, he was hitting around .348 with a .913 OPS.
Boone has also been outspoken about what the Yankees added when they got Garcia.
“He’s been a hitter who has really come of age this year,” Boone said. “One of the best left-vs-right hitters in the National League.”
That’s where the tension lives. The Yankees clearly value Garcia’s bat.
They also have a preset rule that keeps him out when a lefty starts. Saturday didn’t prove the rule is wrong, but it did show the downside of leaving a 30-homer hitter on the bench while the lineup managed just two runs and went 1-for-4 with runners in scoring position.
Goldschmidt did his job. The issue was the cost of not having Garcia in the lineup at all.
And that’s why this loss will linger a little longer than most. The Yankees had won the opener 6-4, carried a four-game winning streak into the weekend, and looked like they were gaining ground in the wild-card race. Instead, they were flattened, Cole’s home-run problem grew to seven allowed over his last two starts, and Boone’s lineup choice suddenly became part of the conversation.
The Yankees are 85-63 and headed deeper into a stretch where every dangerous bat matters. Short series have a way of making rigid plans look a lot less comfortable, especially when left-handed pitching is waiting.
Boone won’t change everything because of one ugly Saturday. But the debate is now out there: should a matchup plan stay fixed when a hitter like Garcia is swinging this well in September?
Sunday brings the rubber game, with Cam Schlittler set to face the Mets’ Christian Scott. The larger question, though, is already hanging over the Yankees.
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