NEW YORK — The Yankees are in serious trouble. The Bombers lost their fourth straight Monday night, falling 5-3 to the Angels to drop to just two games above .500 at 40-38. Aaron Boone’s pregame exhortation that “our season is on the line” apparently didn’t connect.
They had already banked two runs when Angels starter Dylan Bundy became ill on the mound. He left in a 2-2 game, one that looked on pace to be a high scoring shootout. The Angels got their first two runs in the top of the first when Shohei Ohtani annihilated a Michael King pitch for a solo home run that traveled 117.2 miles per hour off the bat, his hardest contact of the year. The magnificent moonshot was Ohtani’s first career hit at Yankee Stadium in his first game there since 2018.
Jared Walsh contributed an RBI double later in the inning, only for the Yankees to match with a Gary Sanchez RBI groundout and Gio Urshela solo homer. Bundy’s regurgitation came two batters after Urshela’s four-bagger, and unfortunately for the Yankees, his replacement had their number, putting a stop to any talks of a shootout.
Jose Suarez got the final out of the second, walked Aaron Judge to begin the third, then strapped himself in for the long haul. Suarez sat ten consecutive Yankees down following the walk.
Meanwhile his offense supplied the eventual winning runs.
From the third to fifth inning, Judge’s walk generated the Yankees’ only baserunner. The Angels capitalized on a DJ LeMahieu error to push a run across in the fifth, then nine-hitter Juan Lagares added on with an opposite field home run off Lucas Luetge, killing the Yankee reliever’s streak of seven straight appearances without an earned run.
Giancarlo Stanton nearly bore a hole in the bullpen with a triple-digit exit velocity shot of his own, but like an overwhelming majority of the Yankees’ home runs this season, it was of the solo variety. His 108.4-mph laser brought the Bombers within one run heading into the final three innings. It would stand as one of two hits against Suarez, a 23-year-old, soft tossing lefty who was utterly unfazed by the bright lights in the Bronx. Suarez finished his longest outing of the year with five strikeouts in 5.1 innings. He put an exclamation point on his performance by striking out Clint Frazier on a sinister changeup, leaving the tying run on base.
The Halos put another run on the board in the eighth and got their final six defensive outs from the sidewinding Steve Cishek and the volatile Raisel Iglesias. When the 27th out whizzed past a swinging Gleyber Torres, the Yankees had finally been lowered into their grave.
It was dug by Jose Suarez, a converted starter who, heading into Monday night, had more minor league demotions than major league wins to his name.
