Yankees Drop Series But Trent Grisham Keeps Rolling

The Yankees lost a series to an AL East opponent for the first time this season and now stand 18-13 and are 1.5 games ahead of the Red Sox, and one reason why they’re atop the division is the surprisingly impressive start by Trent Grisham. Lets get to it.

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When Trent Grisham led off Tuesday night’s game by crushing the second pitch thrown by Baltimore’s soon-to-be shell-shocked Kyle Gibson over the tall right-field wall at Camden Yards, he was tied for the Yankees’ team lead in home runs at eight with a guy named Aaron Judge.

Judge’s response? He hit Gibson’s next pitch over that same wall in right and the Yankees were on their way to a home run derby of a night.

“I can’t let him have that,” Judge joked to reporters when he was asked about Grisham momentarily tying him for the team lead. “It was fun. I’m happy he gave us the lead and we were tied for a second, but I had to take that back.”

One can assume that Judge will be pulling away from Grisham, any other Yankee, and maybe everyone in MLB in the weeks and months to come, but what do we make of Grisham? Can he possibly continue to keep hitting, particularly with power, the way he has so far?

Yes, he struck out to end Wednesday’s game, leaving the incomparable Judge on deck, but there have been a few surprising things that have happened already in 2025, and the emergence of Grisham as a player who Aaron Boone needs to find a place for in the lineup every day may take the cake.

“I’ve been in a good spot mentally, just staying in the present and keeping going,” Grisham said recently. “My swing felt really good during spring but I would (attribute) it mostly to the mental work I’ve been doing over the past year.”

Grisham has survived into what is now his seventh MLB season because he has always been a superior defensive outfielder, and he has two Gold Gloves from his time in San Diego as proof. But he has never been able to hit - his career slash line heading into this season was .213/.313/.384 for a .697 OPS, though he did show a little pop with 70 home runs.

This year, who knows what has gotten into him, but he’s hitting .292/.370/.639 for an OPS of 1.009 which is insane. “He’s been doing incredible things,” Judge said.

This is the same guy who, when he joined the Yankees in 2024 as part of the trade that brought Juan Soto to the Bronx, we all wanted to launch him to the sun. Remember his start last year? In the first 21 games he appeared in covering 48 plate appearances, he had two hits and was batting .051. I literally groaned every time I saw him walk to the plate, and then swore every time he made another pathetic out.

He came on a little thereafter, but because Boone refused to take Alex Verdugo out of the lineup, there was no chance for Grisham to get any consistent playing time with Judge in center and Soto in right. And that was partly why he finished hitting just .190.

This season, the outfield is still crowded with Judge, Cody Bellinger and Jasson Dominguez, but Boone has recognized that Grisham is on a roll and he’s been finding ways to keep him on the field by giving those three players DH days or days off. Not only that, before batting him in the No. 2 hole Wednesday - where he singled and walked - Grisham was in the leadoff spot in the last five games he played.

“He’s been so good,” Boone said. “Obviously, love the way he’s playing all-around right now. We have a lot of deserving people to play. So I have a guy (sitting) usually every day that I’d rather have in the lineup. But it also gives us a chance to keep guys fresh, keep guys playing a lot. Feel like this’ll hopefully be a good thing in the long haul for all of us.”

April 28: Orioles 4, Yankees 3

➤ Will Warren provided another reminder that he’s not a major league pitcher. He put the Yankees into a 4-0 hole by the third inning, and then his teammates could not climb out because they somehow found a way to make a 35-year Japanese rookie named Tomoyuki Sugano look like Nolan Ryan.

➤ Let’s start with Warren. The first two men he faced reached, Cedric Mullins on a single and Gunnar Henderson a double. Here, miraculously, he stranded both, ending the threat by striking out the Ryans - O’Hearn and Mountcastle. Wow, that was unexpected. Also unexpected was what happened in the second because after Jackson Holliday’s two-out single, the normally excellent Grisham completely misplayed a liner by Ramon Laureano into an RBI double.

➤ But what happened in the third was fully expected because at some point, it always does with Warren: The killer inning. He walked Henderson and Adley Rutschman and then served up a meatball right down the middle to O’Hearn who crushed it for a deciding three-run homer. Warren’s wacky night continued when he struck out the next three men, but then in the fourth, he was back to being bad as a Laureano double ended his night.

➤ Props to Ryan Yarbrough. The lefty came in and pitched great, 3.2 innings of shutout ball which kept the Yankees in the game. Not that they could do anything against Sugano who came into the game having struck out just 8% of the batters he had faced, yet whiffed eight Yankees. One day after there were so many good at bats against the Blue Jays, this was a brutal effort by the Yankees.

➤ They finally got to one of the Orioles’ best relievers, Yennier Cano, for a run in the seventh helped by a Ramon Urias throwing error at third. And they made things interesting in the eighth when Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells hit back-to-back RBI doubles, but then Jasson Dominguez and Oswaldo Cabrera whiffed, and in the ninth, Orioles closer Felix Bautista mowed down Grisham, Judge and Cody Bellinger to end it.

➤ The only thing good to come of this was demoted closer Devin Williams pitched a 1-2-3 eighth inning and looked excellent doing it.

Monday’s clubhouse chatter

• Warren on the third inning: “Never trying to start off the inning with back-to-back walks. Obviously O’Hearn did the damage on a pitch that didn’t get quite in. Sucks.”

• Boone on Warren: “Even though it’s only three-plus and he gives up the homer, there’s a lot of good in there. Some really good fastballs, really good changeups, got some big outs. But again, the two walks in that part of the order where you’re in the danger zone and then a mistake. Hopefully he continues to grow from it.”

• Boone on Williams: “It’s just little things here that can get your mojo and remind you just how darned good you are at this game. Hopefully, it’s a step in the right direction. I liked his look out there. He was aggressive in the strike zone, aggressive with his fastball. I thought every changeup he threw … I liked the depth on the pitch, but also establishing his fastball and in the strike zone for us.”

April 29: Yankees 15, Orioles 3

➤ Man, this was some kind of night. Orioles starter Kyle Gibson made his first appearance of the season after signing with the team on March 22, and he probably wishes he’d waited a few more day because he’s never going to forget it. Grisham, Judge and Ben Rice homered in succession to start the game, within the first five pitches!

➤ No team has ever started a game with three straight homers twice in the same season, until now. Back on March 29 when they did this against Milwaukee and Nestor Cortes, the Yankees became the first team to start a game homering on three straight pitches. Now this, to which Boone said, “It’s hard to wrap your head around that.” Pretty amazing, yet they were far from done. After an out, Bellinger went deep for the fourth homer of the inning and Gibson had only thrown 12 pitches to that point. Chisholm then doubled and took third on an error, though he had to come out of the game with an oblique injury. Oswald Peraza replaced him and he scored on Volpe’s RBI double that made it 5-0.

➤ The game was essentially over before some people had even settled into their seats at half-empty Camden Yards, but Rice homered again in the second and the Yankees kept tacking on. Peraza had a two-run single, Goldschmidt had a couple RBI singles, Bellinger had a two-run double and Wells closed it out with a solo homer in the ninth. The Yankees had 19 hits, went 8-for-20 with runners in scoring position and their players combined for 41 total bases. Incredibly, they scored 15 runs and still left 12 men on base.

➤ Meanwhile, Carlos Rodon was great. Helped by a couple sparkling plays on defense - one by Judge, another by Volpe - Rodon took a perfect game into the sixth inning, losing it when he walked Emmanuel Rivera leading off the sixth, then Jorge Mateo ended the no-hitter with a double, and Dylan Carlson ended the shutout with an RBI grounder. Rodon gave up a solo homer to Henderson in the seventh and then exited having allowed just the two runs on two hits with one walk and seven strikeouts. Dare I say, that’s three superb outings in a row for Rodon as he won them all while allowing just two earned runs in 19 innings with 24 strikeouts. His ERA has dipped to 3.43.

Tuesday’s clubhouse chatter

• Boone on the home run explosion: “What a performance. It was fun to watch. I thought three homers, three pitches (against the Brewers), I hadn’t seen that. To see four in five (batters), just a great job by everyone.”

• Judge: “It was impressive at bats, all up and down the first inning. To see Bellinger get one there, which is big time, it’s good to see some of those guys rolling. This team kept the pedal to the metal.”

• Rodon on retiring the first 15 men he faced: “I knew (the perfect game) was there. It’s kind of in the back of your head, but you keep going. Big lead, trying to attack the zone. It’s easy when the boys put up five runs in the first. You’re just going to pour in (strikes) and get outs as quick as we can and get the boys back in the dugout so they can score some more runs.”

April 30: Orioles 5, Yankees 4

➤ Well, once again, shitty starting pitching is tough to overcome and it happened for the second time in this series and was why the Yankees lost two of the three games. Carlos Carrasco, who had delivered two good outings in his previous three, was back to being a BP pitcher. Handed a 2-0 lead when Grisham singled and Judge extended his hitting streak to 11 games with his 10th homer, Carrasco quickly handed that back, and then some.

➤ He had given up two hits in the first inning and stranded them by striking out two men, but he had nothing in the second. Holliday singled and Mountcastle hit a two-run homer, then Urias hit a solo homer and the Orioles were ahead for good. Not done, Henderson singled, stole second and scored on Rutschman’s single to make it 4-2. Carrasco got only 10 outs while allowing eight hits and his ERA soared to 5.90.

➤ Tim Hill wasn’t exactly sharp in relief. After a Goldschmidt solo homer in the fifth, Hill walked two men and then a Volpe error loaded the bases, and a Holliday grounder pushed across what proved to be the winning run.

➤ Judge’s RBI single in the seventh - he went 3-for-3 with a walk and is now hitting .427 - cut it to 5-4, but in the eighth, what an irritating inning. Volpe walked and Wells lined out, and then Bellinger and Dominguez struck out and Volpe never moved. And in the ninth, the Orioles closer, Bautista, once again melted the Yankees in an easy 1-2-3 inning. That’s what a closer looks like, folks.

➤ Speaking of closers, or at this point, former closers, Williams gave up a walk in the eighth but then got an inning-ending double play. And Fernando Cruz was filthy as he struck out four of the five men he faced.

Wednesday’s clubhouse chatter

• Judge on his incredible start: “You’ve just got to go up there with confidence, no matter what. I felt the same even when I was hitting .170 last year. You guys were asking all the questions about, ‘When are you going to turn it around?’ I can’t focus on results; I’ve got to focus on the process and trying to get a job done. And if you do that for 500 at-bats, good things are going to happen.”

• Carrasco: “My slider’s really important to (my) game but I couldn’t find it. I was behind, trying to get ahead of the count with my slider like I always do, but I couldn’t locate it.”

After a day off Thursday, the Yankees are back in the Bronx this weekend to host the Rays who, since these teams last met a little more than a week ago, have started to play pretty well. They won five straight over the Diamondbacks and Padres, two of the best teams in the NL, but then lost the first two games of their series against the Royals and they’ll try to avoid the sweep Thursday.

Here are some of their top players to watch

➤ 1B Jonathan Aranda: He’s cooled off a little after a great start, but he still leads the Rays with a .927 OPS.

➤ 3B Junior Caminero: He leads the Rays with six homers but his .292 on-base is ugly.

➤ DH Yandy Diaz: The man who loves torturing the Yankees has 13 RBI and a team-best eight doubles.

➤ 2B Brandon Lowe: He leads the team with 15 RBI but he’s hitting just .215 with 31 strikeouts.

➤ RP Garrett Cleavinger: In 11 appearances his ERA is 2.53, his WHIP is 0.656, and he’s averaging 13.5 strikeouts per nine.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Friday, 7:05, YES: Max Fried (1.19) vs. Ryan Pepiot (4.24) who is allowing 9.3 hits per nine innings and has an ugly WHIP of 1.382.

• Saturday, 1:05, YES: Clarke Schmidt (5.52) vs. Zack Littell (5.03) who has lost five games, though the Yankees did not see him in the last series.

• Sunday, 7:05, YES: Will Warren (5.63) vs. Taj Bradley (4.58) who gave up six earned runs and took the loss against the Yankees in the last series.