Highly-touted prospect Elmer Rodriguez should have a bright future for the Yankees, but his MLB debut was underwhelming and the Yankees dropped the series finale to the Rangers. Still, it was a superb 7-2 road trip and at 20-11, the Yankees are sitting in first place in the AL East as April comes to a close. Lets get to it.

The Yankees created some buzz when they announced they were calling up one of their top prospects, right-handed pitcher Elmer Rodriguez, to start the finale of the series Wednesday afternoon in Texas.

Unfortunately, the 22-year-old struggled with his command as he walked four batters, hit another with a pitch, and gave up two runs on four hits before Aaron Boone came to get him with no outs and two men aboard in the fifth inning.

Oh well, hopefully it gets better from here.

“This was something I’ve been dreaming of my whole life,” Rodríguez said. “Just being out there, seeing the crowd, seeing the field – it’s something special for me and my family. I went out there and competed. Obviously, not the results [I wanted]. I feel like I needed to execute a little bit better.”

And of course, because noted Yankee dominator Nathan Eovaldi pitched for the Rangers, once Rodriguez gave up those two runs the teams should have just packed up the equipment bags and called it a day because the Yankees had no chance against their long-time nemesis.

Thus, they failed to complete a three-game sweep, though no one should raise an eyebrow after a superb road trip that saw them win seven of nine games in Boston, Houston and Texas.

I’m not really sure why the Yankees called Rodriguez up to start this game. It was Will Warren’s turn in the rotation, and with Thursday’s off day they weren’t going to need a fifth starter until May 5 and they could have called him up then.

I guess they figured an extra day of rest would help Warren, and also, I think another reason may have been that the Rangers have been terrible on offense all season, entering Wednesday averaging just 3.90 runs per game, sixth-fewest in MLB, so this should have been a soft open for the kid.

Nerves were probably part of it, but he was all over the place and it started immediately. He walked two in the first but was bailed out by a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out double play. In the second he loaded the bases with a walk and two singles, but escaped when Brandon Nimmo flied out.

Then he seemed to settle in with a pair of 1-2-3 innings, but the troubles resurfaced in the fifth. He hit the leadoff man, walked the next man, Nimmo singled to load the bases, and Josh Jung lined a two-run single and that was it. Nine of the 20 batters he faced reached base, and he threw just 42 strikes on 80 pitches.

“His stuff was good; the strike-throwing wasn’t as sharp as it’s going to be with him, or typically is,” Boone said. “There was a lot of good out there. You saw his stuff play. A little better on the strike-throwing part and it’s a different line, but he still kept us in the game.”

Rodriguez came over from the Red Sox last year in the trade that sent catcher Carlos Narvaez to Boston and pretty quickly he shot up near the top of their top 30 prospects list at No. 3 behind only infielder George Lombard Jr. and flame-throwing righty Carlos Lagrange. He got to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre late last season, then started 2026 there and was dominating as he had a 1.27 ERA and a 0.890 WHIP in 21.1 innings, during which he walked only seven.

I think a little more seasoning in Triple-A is the right call - after all, he’s made only five starts at the level to date.

“I’ve been excited about him since we traded for him,” Aaron Judge said. “He’s going to be a big piece for us going forward, if it’s a starter, bullpen, whatever. The guy’s got five, six different pitches he can use. He commands the zone well.”

➤ Max Fried is a joy to watch. Once again, he was great which has become redundant, and he’s great because he’s such an architect out there. He calls his own game, he has a plan and a purpose for every pitch, and then he executes them with pinpoint precision. He went six innings and it should have been seven because he was only at 89 pitches when Boone pulled him. Four hits allowed, two walks, five strikeouts, no runs.

➤ And then once he was out, white knuckle time with this bullpen. Camilo Doval blew the shutout as pinch hitter Joc Pederson homered. Tim Hill, normally so reliable, walked two men in the eighth but luckily got three groundouts to escape damage. And then David Bednar, as always, made it way too tense in the ninth, with a lot of help from Jazz Chisholm who had quite an inning in the field.

➤ Jake Burger led off the ninth with a hard grounder up the middle which Jazz dove and stopped. However, he rushed his throw with the slow-footed Burger running, and he threw it away so Burger was safe. Then Jazz botched a ground ball, but was at least able to recover and flip it to first to nip Pederson on a play that was overturned to out thanks to a Yankee challenge. After a strikeout, Jazz then fumbled another grounder for an error, and Alejandro Osuna followed with an RBI single to make it 4-2 and the tying runs were on base. Bednar then got a groundout to end it, Caballero to Jazz for a force and thankfully Jazz caught that one. Shaking my head.

➤ The Yankees scored all of their runs off Rangers starter Jack Leiter. Ben Rice hit a two-run homer following a Trent Grisham single in the third and Aaron Judge went back-to-back, and Jazz led off the fourth with a homer. That was it, a homer or bust game. Rice and Judge - who also had two doubles in this game, one of his best of the year - became just the second Yankees teammates to each hit at least 10 home runs in the first 29 games. The other duo was Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra in 1956.

➤ Fried, who has a great move to first, had a pickoff so this was the fourth straight game a Yankee pitcher had done that. Four straight games with a pickoff has happened just one other time in franchise history, that in 1995. Fried now has 38 since he made his MLB debut in 2017, the most of any pitcher.

➤ Giancarlo Stanton officially went on the IL so Jasson Dominguez came up, was the DH, and had a single in four at bats. Jose Caballero’s bat continued to show life as he had a single, but then he got picked off, and in the ninth after he was hit by a pitch, he got thrown out stealing for the fourth straight time. Man, he is a rollercoaster.

➤ Cam Schlittler followed up Fried’s brilliance with six scoreless innings of his own and that enabled him to outduel Jacob deGrom who was nearly as good. Schlittler gave up some hard contact but he was helped by some spectacular defense behind him in the first inning as Cody Bellinger and Grisham made great catches to rob two hits.

➤ Schlittler struck out eight because he just comes right at batters and doesn’t give a shit about nibbling. His philosophy is hit it if you can. He threw the 48 fastest pitches of the game, all 97.9 mph or better, scattered three hits and two walks and he never allowed a runner to reach third base. His best work came in the sixth when pesky Brandon Nimmo singled and Josh Jung walked, but they advanced no further as he mowed down Corey Seager, Pederson and Burger. His ERA is 1.51, his WHIP is 0.744 and his WHIP against right-handed batters is 0.550. Incredible.

➤ deGrom’s only run allowed came in the first when Judge lined a two-out single and chugged all the way around to score on Bellinger’s double which just missed going over the wall. Thereafter, the Yankees had just one single off deGrom, but he was done after six. Austin Wells hit a solo homer off reliever Jalen Beeks in the seventh, and Judge hit what turned out to be a huge solo homer in the ninth.

➤ That’s because the Yankees bullpen once again made us sweat as the combination of Brent Headrick in the seventh, Fernando Cruz in the eighth and Bednar in the ninth allowed eight men to reach base. Headrick struck out Nimmo to end his mess. Cruz gave up a single and a walk to start the eighth, but then Pederson stupidly tried to sacrifice, the ball went to Cruz between the mound and third, and from his ass he managed to field the ball and get it Ryan McMahon for a force at third. He then whiffed Burger and Ezequiel Duran for a huge escape.

➤ Then came the Bednar show. The start wasn’t his fault as McMahon booted a grounder which should have been a routine second out. But then shit got interesting. Danny Jansen tripled in a run, Nimmo got hit by a pitch and Jung singled to make it 3-2. But with the tying and winning runs on base, Bednar got Seager to hit into a slick 4-6-3 DP to end it. All of that was happening just moments after I exploded in profanity after watching the Sabres lose Game 5 to the Bruins in overtime, so I was in a state at that point watching Bednar nearly piss away this game.

➤ To make room for Elmer Rodriguez to make the Wednesday start, the Yankees DFA’d Randal Grichuk who has been useless from the moment he joined the team. You know what will happen now, he’ll sign with some team and when he plays against the Yankees he’ll go back to doing what he has always done and kill them. I have no doubt about this.

➤ It’s crazy to me how some pitchers just own the Yankees, over and over and over, and Nathan Eovaldi is right at the top of the list. He came into the game with a putrid 5.79 ERA, but as usual the Yankees had no chance against him.

➤ Before this game, in his career he had pitched more innings against them (125.2) than any team he has faced, his ERA was 3.22 (I was surprised it was that high when I looked it up) and his WHIP was 1.066. Of course, those numbers all improved after he toyed with them for seven scoreless innings, during which he scattered four singles and a walk with seven strikeouts. Since joining the Rangers in 2023, he now has a 1.58 ERA in seven starts against one of his former teams. Sadly, he’s probably lined up to face the Yankees again next week when the teams meet in the Bronx.

➤ In reality, Eovaldi also caught the Yankees on the right day. This felt like the ultimate getaway, don’t give a shit game at the end of a long and very successful road trip. You know what I always say - every game matters, especially when the Rays refuse to lose and are right on the Yankees’ heals. But the Yankees - with the exception of Rice who had three of their five hits - were comatose all day and were shutout for the second time in 31 games.

➤ Once Rodriguez was out, Headrick retired all four men he faced, but Jake Bird gave up a run in the seventh as Duran doubled and Sam Haggerty singled him home. That’s all the Rangers got, and it was more than enough.

➤ Dominguez, trying to take advantage of Stanton’s absence, left the game after getting hit on the elbow by a pitch. Not great, and there was no update on how serious the elbow bruise is.

After a day off Thursday, the Yankees return home for a four-game series against the Orioles that is one of those weird wraparound deals which means it won’t end until Monday night. Thus, the newsletter won’t be coming out until Tuesday morning.

The Orioles have sputtered at the start and are 14-15, trailing New York by five games for new manager Craig Albernaz. They are a middle of the pack team for several reasons, but one if that they’ve dealt with a bunch of injuries as seven of their regular contributors are on the injured list including starting pitchers Dean Kremer and Zach Eflin, closer Felix Bautista, and infielders Ryan Mountcastle and Jackson Holliday.

➤ C Adley Rutschmann: After a terrible 2025 season, and then missing a chunk of time at the start od 2026, he is off to a great start and looking like the stud everyone thought he was as he has a team-best 1.018 OPS.

➤ 1B Pete Alonso: The ex-Met has started poorly, hitting .198 with a .660 OPS, but he’s always dangerous.

➤ SS Gunnar Henderson: He’s also off to a rough start with a .287 on-base, though he does lead the team with nine homers.

➤ OF Taylor Ward: He came to the Orioles in a trade from the Angels and he’s raking with an MLB-high 13 doubles while hitting .313 with a .882 OPS.

➤ RP Ryan Helsley: Came over this season to be the closer after a horrendous 2025 with the Mets and he has seven saves and a 2.53 ERA, more in line with the seven solid years he spent with the Cardinals.