Big Series Win For Yankees Over Padres

After a terrible loss in the rain on Monday, the Yankees bounced back to win the series against the Padres thanks to a 10-run inning Tuesday and a Devin Williams redemption inning on Wednesday. Lets get to it. 

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If there’s anyone that Devin Williams should be seeking counsel from right now as his baseball career is in the midst of burning in the Bronx, it’s Carlos Rodon, the man whose night he ruined on Monday with his latest mound meltdown.

Rodon missed the first half of his first season with the Yankees in 2023 because of an injury, and when he returned, he pitched about as bad as he ever had in his career and the unrelenting fan base took an immediate disliking to him.

Even last year when he was much better, whenever he had a rough outing he heard it in the form of boos at Yankee Stadium, but it’s a vastly different story in 2025 as Rodon has been tremendous for four consecutive starts and has helped Max Fried carry just about the entire load for the weakened starting rotation.

“It’s part of the business, it’s part of being in New York, and that’s how it goes,” Rodon said Tuesday. “If you don’t pitch well, you’re going to get booed. If you pitch well, they’re going to love you.”

Williams has not pitched well. In fact, he has pitched worse than Rodon ever has for New York, and yeah, he’s hearing the boos, and they were a loud cacophony Monday night when he blew yet another game and a superb Rodon performance went to waste in a 4-3 loss to San Diego.

Tuesday, reporters asked Rodon about the similarities between the situations he and Williams have faced, and he said he needs to get with Williams and help him navigate the stormy seas.

“I definitely can relate to him,” Rodon said. “Maybe I need to be better as a teammate and approach him. I can put that one on me. We all have our struggles. You saw when I got here. I’ve struggled before. I struggled when I was in Chicago, and it’s just up and down. It’s one of those adversity things that you gotta look it in the face and kick it in the face. I know what that feels like. It’s not easy. But we acquired him for a reason. He’s such a great pitcher. He just needs to build that confidence. He needs to know what kind of pitcher he is. He has an unbelievable changeup … just go out there and pitch with some swagger.”

If Rodon had his pow-wow with Williams Wednesday, I don’t know, but Williams sure had that swagger.

He entered a tie game in the 10th inning with the free runner at second and having to face the top of the Padres order. Nothing about that looked promising, but while he made it very sweaty by walking one batter and hitting another with a pitch, he also struck out Fernando Tatis, Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts to leave the bases loaded.

“That’s as tough a spot as you’re going to be in, right?” Aaron Boone said. “Strong top of the order. You know what’s going on here in the first month-plus. That takes a lot of guts to stand out there and just make pitch after pitch and continue to execute. That’s what he is and what he’s capable of.”

And in the bottom half, Williams was rewarded for that escape when the Yankees pushed across the winning run thanks to a bunt by Oswaldo Cabrera and a walk-off sacrifice fly by JC Escarra which - after the way things went Monday - gave the Yankees a very nice series victory over one of the best teams in baseball.

May 5: Padres 4, Yankees 3

➤ Considering the opponent, Rodon was as good as he’s ever been as a Yankee with 6.2 innings of three-hit, one-walk shutout baseball, pitching in miserable conditions which caused him to deal with two separate rain delays. I have to admit, I just don’t understand MLB’s process for weather like this. There are days when they postpone games because of the threat of bad weather, but then there was this game which was played, in part, during a rainstorm. What is so difficult about pausing the game and picking it back up the next day, especially when this was the first game of the series? It’s so stupid to me that they made these guys play in those conditions.

➤ Anyway, the Padres could not touch Rodon and this should have been his fourth straight victory. Instead, it became yet another utterly ridiculous loss for the Yankees because Boone further proved how clueless he sometimes is, and of course, Williams shit the bed. Again.

➤ At the end of the seventh, Fernando Cruz threw two pitches, the second of which got past Austin Wells, but he located the ball and was able to tag out Luis Campusano who foolishly tried to score. That got the Yankees out of a jam and preserved their 3-0 lead and Boone could not have had an easier decision: Send Cruz back out for the eighth. He’s clearly been the second-best reliever on the team behind Luke Weaver.

➤ Nope, because in his pregame script, Boone had Williams pitching the eighth, and God forbid the manager read the situation and the moment. To him, it didn’t matter that he was going to waste Cruz after just two pitches, against a very good team, let alone use another reliever who otherwise could have had a night off. Boone said afterward that Cruz pitched two innings Saturday so he wanted to be careful with him. For Christ’s sake, I’m so sick of the babying of these guys. Oh, and he also said he wanted to make sure everyone stayed involved and Williams hadn’t pitched since Friday. I just roll my eyes at some of the shit that comes out of his mouth.

➤ That said, this loss was squarely on Williams. He could have made Boone’s idiocy a moot point. Instead, he walked ex-Yankee Tyler Wade, the No. 8 hitter, and then allowed a single to the No. 9 hitter, former Yankee farm hand Brandon Lockridge. After striking out Tatis, he had to wait about five minutes because Padres manager Mike Shildt went berserk on the home plate umpire, and when play finally resumed, Williams walked Luis Arraez to load the bases. Arraez has a 4.2% walk rate, meaning it’s almost impossible to walk him, but Williams did.

➤ Boone yanked Williams, who should have never been in the game in the first place, and asked Weaver to remain perfect. But for the first time this season, Weaver stunk. He threw a meatball down the middle and Machado ripped it for a two-run double. And then he threw another center cut meatball which Bogaerts lined for a go-ahead two-run single. I’m watching this, and I could not believe that it happened.

➤ I can’t be pissed at Weaver, who gave up his first run of the season. He was due for one of these and he allowed all three of the Williams runners he inherited to score. Dating back to May 25, 2024, he had allowed only three inherited runners to score in his previous 57 games covering 68.2 innings, numbers that would make Mariano Rivera stand up and take notice. So yeah, he was due for a bad one.

➤ This was their fifth loss in a game they led in the eighth inning or later, most in MLB, and Williams is the primary reason for three of those.

➤ The positives? Trent Grisham kept raking, hitting a two-run homer; Anthony Volpe was back after missing a game and he hit a sacrifice fly; and while Judge’s 13-game hitting streak ended, he drew a walk to extend his on-base streak to 31. Of course, he also made a bad baserunning decision in the first inning when Ben Rice doubled and he tried to score when the Padres bobbled the relay, but Bogaerts recovered and gunned him down out at the plate.

What they said in Monday’s clubhouse

• Williams on his latest meltdown, including partially blaming the condition of the mound: “It’s one of those nights where you’re not only battling the hitter. I was battling the mound. It was the landing spot, to be honest with you. I couldn’t figure it out with the release point on my fastball. It was getting away from me. But we’re all given the same set of circumstances, and I couldn’t pull through tonight.”

• Weaver: “Just not executed well enough. The circumstance really needed some true quality pitches, and I feel like I just didn’t get it to where it needed to go. It’s a lack of execution. I know this is part of the game. I just didn’t quite have that focus that I needed to really drive it in there. It’s a real stinger, for sure, and one that I’m not going to take lightly. But I know I need to move on and make sure I’m prepared for the next day.”

• Boone on Williams: “I still maintain, like, this is not a pitcher we’re trying to reinvent or a guy that’s past his prime. This is still an elite (pitcher), and all the stuff there is saying that. … I do feel like it’s very close. It’s just about controlling counts a little bit better, and once he does, he’ll ascend real quick. I think the biggest thing is command and being ahead, and not putting guys on. The stuff is there. Stuff’s fine. And I do believe he’ll get on a roll and be lights-out and dominant. But it’s just the command part of it, where walks or getting behind in certain situations have hurt him a little bit.”

May 6: Yankees 12, Padres 3

➤ Wow, how about the seventh inning? The Yankees scored 10 runs against the best bullpen in MLB as they sent 13 men to the plate and produced seven hits and three walks, with every one of those guys scoring. It was the first time they’ve put up double digits in an inning since 2015 in Texas.

➤ It all started with a hustle double by Jasson Dominguez, batting right-handed which was shocking, as he looped into left-center and was running hard out of the box and made it to second easily. Love to see that, something the Yankees so rarely do. And it ended with Wells hitting a grand slam, after he’d earlier hit an RBI single. He became the first Yankee with five RBI in one inning since Alex Rodriguez had seven against the Rays on Oct. 4, 2009. That, as you may recall, was the precursor to A-Rod finally having a great postseason and he led the Yankees to their last World Series title.

➤ In between, Wells drove in the first run with a single, Grisham drew a bases-loaded walk, Rice had a two-run double, and Bellinger and Volpe had RBI singles before Wells’ grand slam. To that point, the Yankees had been handcuffed by old friend Michael King who gave up just two runs on three hits in six innings, one of the runs coming on Judge’s 12th homer. In the seventh, four of the runs came off Adrian Morejon and six came courtesy of another old friend, Wandy Peralta who saw his ERA jump from 1.35 to 5.14. Almost four runs! He’d only given up two runs all year in 14 appearances.

➤ Clarke Schmidt matched King inning for inning and exited after six having allowed just two runs on seven hits and a walk. It was a nice step forward for Schmidt. The only runs he gave up came in the fourth thanks two singles, a walk, a balk that scored the first and a sacrifice fly that pushed home the second.

➤ Before the game, the Yankees DFA’d Carlos Carrasco and his 5.91 ERA. I don’t know what they were expecting when they signed him in spring training. Obviously, he made the team because of the injuries to Schmidt, Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil, but this guy had already been shot for two years. What a waste of time. It would have been nice if Cashman had signed someone viable who now could be ingrained into the team, but now the search is on for a replacement with apparently nothing worthwhile in the minor league system.

What they said in Tuesday’s clubhouse

• Boone on Dominguez’s hustle double: “It’s fun to watch him run. He can really go. Looking back, it was a really big play. It kind of set the tone for that inning, and then great at-bats followed him.”

• Wells on the inning: “That was a lot of fun to watch, a lot of fun to be a part of. We’ve got some really good hitters. I don’t know if there’s one thing that made it great, but I think we’re swinging at strikes and being ready to go. I don’t know if I’ve ever had five RBIs in a game before([at any level).”

• Schmidt: “We’ve had some really good, close games this past week. It just felt like the chips were going to fall our way one of these nights,” Schmidt said. “What a performance from the offense; that inning was very impressive. When they’re clicking like that, it’s a lot of fun to be on this side.”

May 7: Yankees 4, Padres 3 (10)

➤ This was a tremendous pitching duel between Max Fried and Dylan Cease. Fried made one mistake - he left a curveball over the plate in the fourth and Jackson Merrill crushed it for a solo homer. Otherwise, it was seven outstanding innings allowing five hits with no walks and eight strikeouts. Yet Cease was even better. Cease came into the game struggling with a 5.61 ERA, but he had a no-hitter into the seventh inning before Bellinger crushed a solo homer, and then Cease left the game a couple batters later with a forearm injury.

➤ Ian Hamilton was not sharp as he walked two men in the eighth and both scored when Weaver - who has suddenly become hittable - gave up an RBI single to Merrill and a sacrifice fly to Bogaerts. But in the bottom of the inning, the Yankees again did damage against the Padres bullpen. Cabrera walked against Jason Adam and Grisham launched a two-run homer to tie it at 3-3, his 10th of the season, already more than the nine he hit all of last season. That’s a story that I did not see evolving this year but Grisham has been great. He now has seven home runs that have either tied the game of given the Yankees the lead and that’s tied with Arizona’s Corbin Carroll for the most such homers this season.

➤ Weaver regrouped and worked an easy ninth against the weak bottom of San Diego’s order, and when the Yankees did nothing against tremendous Padres closer Ranger Suarez, it was on to a very interesting 10th. Williams started well with the strikeout of Tatis, but then the free runner, Lockridge, stole third so the Yankees had to play the infield in. But it didn’t matter because no one put a ball in play. Arraez walked, Machado whiffed, Merrill got plunked, and Bogaerts swung and missed at a 3-2 changeup and Williams let out a primal scream as he hopped off to the dugout.

➤ And how about the way the Yankees won it? With Dominguez at second, Cabrera dropped down a perfect bunt to move him to third and Escarra pinch hit for Oswald Peraza and came through with a long fly to left that ended it. Great moment for the rookie.

➤ Bad night for Judge who dropped a fly ball for an error and went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts as his 32-game on-base streak ended. He’s hit a little patch here, 2-for-15 in his last four games so his average has dropped from .432 to .400. What a bum!

➤ The Yankees still haven’t lost a game in which Fried started, now 8-0.

What they said in Wednesday’s clubhouse

• Grisham on the series: “Just a lot of fight, a lot of grit. This series was kind of like the ability of the guys that are in this locker room; there was a lot of fight. Every game, we were down, fighting back. We were in every single one of them, and then to come away with the last two was huge.”

• Escarra: “Man, a lot was going through my mind. My heart was pounding through my chest, standing there hitting. But my story, what happened today, it makes it all worth it. Those are the moments that I’ll never forget. These are things you dream about as a kid, and it’s all unfolding in real time in front of my eyes.”

• Williams: “It was a big spot, you know. Starting with the runner at second, getting out of that without giving up any runs, I felt like our guys were going to come through and the game was going to be over - and it was.”

Thursday is a travel day to the West Coast as the Yankees start a six-game trip to Sacramento (yeah, that’s just weird to type that) and Seattle which will probably be a little more difficult than you think as these are the top two teams in the AL West so far. First up are the 20-18 A’s who just dropped the last two games of a series against the Mariners, blowing a 5-0 fourth-inning lead Wednesday, and a 3-2 ninth-inning lead Tuesday.

Here are some of their top players to watch

➤ DH Brent Rooker: Tied for the team lead with nine homers and has an OPS of .799.

➤ SS Jacob Wilson: He went 4-for-5 Wednesday and how has 51 hits, 21 RBI and a .357 average.

➤ 3B Tyler Soderstrom: Has nine homers and leads the team with 25 RBI and an .867 OPS.

➤ RF Lawrence Butler: An exciting young player whose off to a bit of a slow start with a .306 on-base.

➤ RP Justin Sterner: You know about stud closer Mason Miller and he has 10 saves, but set up man Sterner has not allowed a run all season in 18.1 innings.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Friday, 7:05, YES: Will Warren (5.65) vs Osvaldo Bido who has an ugly 1.459 WHIP and strikes out just 5.2 per nine innings.

• Saturday, 7:05, YES: Carlos Rodon (2.96) vs. JP Sears (2.93), the ex-Yankee who has a tremendous 5.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

• Sunday, 7:05, YES: TBD for the Yankees vs. Luis Severino (3.62), another ex-Yankee who signed with the A’s in the offseason for three years and $67 million.