Blue Jays Hand Slumping Yankees Their First Series Loss of 2024

The Yankees losing streak reached three games, and while it’s not the time to say the season is over, it’s not too early to say that they are starting to look like exactly like the team I thought they were, which is to say flawed in many ways.

And, per your request based on the survey I sent out a few weeks ago, I’m diversifying my history offerings on Wednesday to occasionally expand outside the Yankee Universe. Today, we’re going back to 1940, Comiskey Park in Chicago, where Cleveland Indians great Bob Feller did something no other pitcher in baseball history has accomplished: He hurled a no-hitter on Opening Day. Lets get to it.

April 16: Blue Jays 5, Yankees 4

That 12-3 start sure was a lot of fun, but it’s already become a distant memory because these last three games have hinted that the Yankees are most likely pretenders as a legitimate World Series contender.

All along I’ve told you - starting back before spring training even began - that I had skeptical expectations for the 2024 season. Sure, trading for Juan Soto was exciting, and I thought Alex Verdugo would be a nice upgrade in left field, but that’s pretty much all they did to improve the lineup.

They were banking on Aaron Judge not getting hurt and being Aaron Judge; they believed that Gleyber Torres, in his contract year, would have a big year after a pretty solid 2023; and then they were reduced to hoping and praying for bounce back seasons from Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, and Anthony Rizzo, all of whom are way on the wrong side of 30. That’s a lot of banking, believing, hoping and praying, and it didn’t stop there.

And there was more of that regarding the pitching staff. They needed for Carlos Rodon and Nestor Cortes to not be disasters; for Marcus Stroman to fit in; for Clarke Schmidt to find consistency and find a way to pitch five innings once in a while; and for the revamped and bullpen to not only be reliable but able to survive many long nights. That was already asking too much, and then Gerrit Cole went down for the first two months and, yeah, I had no inclination that 2024 was going to be special.

Might I be wrong? Sure, but this three-game losing streak has shone the glaring light on all the worries I had about this team. Three straight mostly lousy and short starts from the rotation, a shaky bullpen, poor play in the field, and an offense that can go to sleep for innings on end.

Don’t be surprised if, by the end of the weekend, the Orioles have overtaken the Yankees atop the AL East. As a matter of fact, that could happen as early as Wednesday.

Here are my observations:

➤ The day had already started pretty poorly for Rodon when a scoring change from his start on April 9 against the Marlins that sent his ERA soaring from 1.72 to 2.87. For some bizarre, inexplicable reason, MLB changed what was an obvious error by Rizzo on a ground ball by Jazz Chisholm to a base hit. And that meant two earned runs were added to Rodon’s final line. Why this was done, I have no earthly idea. I’m guessing Chisholm bitched about it so they reviewed the play.

➤ Then Rodon took the mound in Toronto and was horseshit all night and now his ERA is 3.66. He could not put hitters away, the Blue Jays fouled off about a million pitches, and it took Rodon 101 pitches to wobble his way through four inefficient innings. It was a bit of a miracle that the Jays scored only three runs as he gave up five hits, walked four, and struck out five, so once again, a Yankee starter provided no length and left a mediocre bullpen that scares no one to cover way too many outs. “I wish I was better tonight,” Rodon said. “I had good stuff, had stuff to get guys out. But they had a good approach today. … Just need to be a little better with putting guys away, that’s for sure.”

➤ Luke Weaver took over for Rodon and it has become clear that he’s not going to be a good option for this team. He gave up two runs in the sixth, the runs that wound up being decisive, and his ERA is now 5.91.

➤ As usual, the top of the Blue Jays order wore the Yankees out. It never ends with these royal pains in the ass. George Springer, Vlad Guerrero and Bo Bichette could all be in concurrent comas and they would still kill the Yankees. All three of them are hitting below .221 so far, but in this game they combined for four hits, five walks and three RBI.

➤ What an awful night for Anthony Volpe who struck out four times. We haven’t seen this version of Volpe all season, but he looked completely overmatched, especially against Jays starter Yusei Kikuchi who for whatever reason is another guy who has the Yankees’ number. It was a frightening flashback to the way Volpe hit last season as a rookie when he whiffed on 27.8% of his plate appearances.

➤ I don’t know what drug melted third base coach Luis Rojas’s brain in the second inning when he sent Giancarlo Stanton home from second with two outs on a single to left by Jose Trevino. His idea of running is jogging, and that’s what he was doing on this play. It was just painful to watch and we could all see it on TV that he should have been out by 10 feet but Jays catcher Danny Jansen impersonated Gleyber Torres and dropped the throw home which allowed Stanton to score. What a break that was, not that it mattered in the end.

➤ Small sample size, blah, blah, blah. Judge has been terrible for two-plus weeks. He doesn’t have a clue up there and he’s now hitting .182. The Yankees have only 10 hits in the first two games of the series and Judge is 0-for-8.

➤ And my patience is nearly out with Torres. He made yet another head scratching error on a play that any major league player should make with ease. He dropped a throw at second base on a steal attempt by Isiah Kiner-Falefa which allowed a run to score from third. That’s three errors this year, at least that many other screwups that could have been ruled errors but weren’t, and to make matters worse, he’s been useless on offense as he’s hitting .206 with no homers and two RBI in 82 plate appearances.

➤ “In the end, we got outplayed tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “They played a heck of a game in a lot of ways. Made a couple huge, big plays defensively in the outfield. Kikuchi was really good. And they had those kind of tough at-bats that weren’t always ending in walks but made us work really hard and kind of outlasted us there.”

Bob Feller’s Opening Day No-Hitter is a Feat Unmatched

CHICAGO (April 16, 1940) - Frankie Frisch knew what he was doing on the early spring afternoon in 1936 when Bob Feller made his major league debut for the Cleveland Indians.

It was only an exhibition game, nothing on the line, so Frisch - after watching the 17-year-old fireballing Feller nearly tear the catcher’s glove off Rollie Hemsley’s hand in warmups - turned to his backup, Stu Martin, and said: “Stu, you’re playing second today. I don’t feel well.”

Asked later why he didn’t play, Frisch said: “Face that kid? Are you crazy? The old Flash may be dumb, but he ain’t that dumb.”

Frisch’s St. Louis Cardinals - the famous Gashouse Gang that was two years removed from a World Series victory - were still considered one of the finest teams in baseball, but Feller simply overpowered them, striking out eight batters in three innings of work. Frisch watched from the bench, comfortable in the thought that being in the National League prevented him from having to face Feller unless the Indians and Cardinals were to advance to a World Series opposite each other.

Five months later, in his regular-season debut, Feller fanned 15 St. Louis Browns, and three weeks after that, he mowed down 17 Philadelphia A’s to tie the major league single-game strikeout record set by Dizzy Dean of the Cardinals three years earlier.

The precedent was established, and for 18 years, the man they called Rapid Robert embarrassed hitters on a regular basis with his overpowering fastball.

Oddly, on Opening Day of the 1940 season when Feller became the first and only pitcher to throw a no-hitter on that most sacred of baseball days, he didn’t feel at all like the dominating pitcher he had become. It was a raw 47 degrees at Comiskey Park and Feller had trouble getting loose. In the first two innings, five of the six outs came on strikeouts, but he also walked three and Hemsley had to make a few trips out to the mound to make sure Feller was all right.

Hemsley had a right to be concerned. In Feller’s last appearance of spring training against the New York Giants, he allowed 10 runs on 15 hits in five innings.

“That all goes back to the question of a pitcher pacing himself,” Feller said, explaining his shoddy performance. “I knew it was only a tuneup. I wasn’t going to get my brains beat out in that game and then have the White Sox beat them out on Opening Day, when the games counted.”

Feller - pitching in front of his parents and sister - survived a spate of trouble in the second when Chicago loaded the bases on two walks and a misplayed pop fly, but Feller struck out Bob Kennedy to end the threat.

Perhaps Feller was unnerved by the fact that his mother was in the stands. The only other time she had seen him pitch in the big leagues to this point, the year before on Mothers’ Day, she had been struck in the face by a foul ball and had to be taken to the hospital where she spent two days. Mrs. Feller was safe on this day, because over the final seven innings, the White Sox barely put up a fight against her son.

In the fourth, the Indians manufactured the only run Feller would need. With one out, Feller’s road roommate, Jeff Heath, singled to left. Ken Keltner flew out to left for the second out, bringing Hemsley to the plate. Hemsley, who had driven in just 36 runs in 1939, slashed a line drive down the line in right. By the time Taffy Wright retrieved it Heath had scored and Hemsley was standing on third.

“He would pick today to pitch a no-hit game,” Hemsley said of Feller after the game. “I was all set to be the hero of the game on account of driving in the only run. Now nobody will even know I was in the contest.”

Once he had the lead, Feller settled into a breezy rhythm as he continually set the White Sox down without incident and as he strode to the mound in the ninth, Feller was completely aware that he had a no-hitter intact.

“The team knew it and was going out of its way to avoid any mention of the subject, in keeping with one of baseball’s many superstitions,” Feller recalled. “I never felt that way, though. My teammates didn’t have to bother avoiding the subject. I knew full well I had a no-hitter going, and so does every other pitcher in that situation. If he tells the reporters after the game that he wasn’t aware of it, don’t you believe him.”

Feller began the ninth by inducing Mike Kreevich to ground out to Ray Mack at second, and then Moose Solters popped up to shortstop Lou Boudreau, the 20th consecutive out recorded by Feller. This brought the ever-pesky Luke Appling to the plate as Chicago’s last hope, and Feller knew this would be the toughest out of the day.

“He was a master, the best I’ve ever seen, at flicking his bat to foul off a pitch while he waited for the one he wanted,” said Feller. “It didn’t make any difference if he had two strikes on him either. He was so good at it and so confident in doing it that he just stood up there and took a poke at every pitch with no concern that he might miss it and strike out.

“He came up determined to break up my no-hitter. Then he went into his act. The same guy who once fouled off 18 straight pitches just to use up a lot of baseballs because he was mad at management about his contract started doing the same thing to me. He knew what inning it was, that I had to be running out of gas pretty soon. I was a hard thrower and by the ninth inning hard throwers sometimes are tiring.”

Appling worked the count to 2-2, then fouled off four pitches in a row.

“We might still be there if a counter strategy hadn’t occurred to me,” said Feller. “I wasn’t going to keep throwing and play right into his hands, so I threw the next two pitches outside the strike zone. That got rid of Appling with a walk. I had already issued four walks, so another wasn’t going to make any difference anyhow. It was an intentional walk, but nobody else knew it.”

Now Taffy Wright represented Chicago’s last chance, and he almost made Feller pay for that “intentional” walk. He ripped a ground ball into the hole between first and second, but Mack slid over quickly and knocked it down, and his throw to Hal Trosky at first beat Wright by a step to end the game.

This would be the first of three no-hitters Feller would twirl in his marvelous career, and what may be even more impressive is that Feller threw 12 one-hitters. He was a money pitcher, and he admitted that he felt he was at his best when he was pitching against the best.

“I used to get real high when I went against (Ted) Williams or (Joe) DiMaggio,” he said. “I would stand out there on the mound and think it was just me against them, alone, in some quiet place, man to man, forgetting there might be fifty, sixty or seventy thousand people watching us.”

During his 18 years, Feller went 266-162 with an earned-run average of 3.25, and had he not spent nearly four years in the Navy during the prime of his career - he was the first major league ballplayer to volunteer for World War II service in December 1941 - he undoubtedly would have reached the magical 300-victory plateau. He led the AL in victories six times and strikeouts seven times for a Cleveland team that won only two pennants during his time there.

Here’s a video on Feller produced by the Baseball Hall of Fame:

⚾ April 15, 1976: The Yankees made their return to the newly refurbished Yankee Stadium with an 11-4 rout of the Twins in the home opener. The Yankees had played their home games in 1974 and 1975 at Shea Stadium. Yankee legends such as Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Whitey Ford took part in pre-game ceremonies, as well as the widows of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Mickey Rivers and Oscar Gamble each had three hits and two RBI and Dick Tidrow pitched five innings of relief of starter Rudy May to get the win.

⚾ April 17, 1951: Two Yankees legends began their careers on this day in the 5-0 home opener victory over the Red Sox. Bob Sheppard debuted as the Yankee Stadium public address, and the batter who he announced third in the lineup was the prized rookie, Mantle. Mantle grounded out to second base in his first major league at-bat and his first hit came in the sixth, an RBI single that ignited a three-run rally. Mantle would play 18 years in pinstripes, but he had nothing on Sheppard who held his job through 2007, more than 4,500 games.

⚾ April 18, 2005: The Yankees got off to a 4-8 start, apparently still in a fog after what had happened the previous fall, but they unleashed some of their frustrations with a 19-8 blowout of the Rays at Yankee Stadium. New York sent 17 men to the plate in the second inning and scored 13 runs. At one point, 10 consecutive batters reached base safely. Alex Rodriguez had a two-run homer and a two-run double in the inning and finished 5-for-6 with five runs scored and six RBI. Tino Martinez capped the huge inning with a grand slam.