With the Yankees’ offense taking a 29-inning scoreless streak into Wednesday’s game against the Angels, James Rowson understood the questioning. He understood the concern. And he understood the frustration from fans.
But the hitting coach projected confidence that the Bombers’ drought would end.
“I expect this to pass over,” Rowson said before a 3-2 Yankees loss.
He was technically correct, but the club’s sixth defeat in a row hardly came off as triumphant for an offense that struck out 10 times, went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position and left five men on base.
“You play 162, you’re gonna hit a little rut like this,” Aaron Judge said after the Yankees suffered just their second-ever seven-game span with seven runs or fewer and at least six losses. “But you can’t give up. You can’t mope about it.”
Yankees 7-game spans with 7 runs or fewer and 6+ losses:
June 12-18, 2025
Sept 1-7, 1908— Katie Sharp (@SharpStats17) June 19, 2025
While the Yankees continued to fall short in the scoring department, an Anthony Volpe error in the eighth inning gave the Angels their decisive run.
Tim Hill had just inherited a one-out, bases-loaded jam from Fernando Cruz, but the side-winding lefty induced a groundball from Jo Adell. Volpe let the ball play him, booted it and threw it away in an attempt to get an out at second base.
“Right off the bat, I gotta be aggressive, go get the ball and make the play,” said Volpe, who also went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and a caught stealing.
The bottom of the inning saw Trent Grisham fail to get a bunt down with two on and nobody out before swinging and popping up near home plate on a 2-1 count. Judge then flew out, cementing an 0-for-4 performance, before Cody Bellinger ended the threat with a popup.
The Yankees then failed to capitalize on an inning-opening Angels error in the ninth.
Asked why Grisham didn’t attempt to bunt after the first strike, Aaron Boone said, “With 2-1, I took it off just with as aggressive they were playing. They’re in a walk Judge situation probably, but I was willing to live with that. And they were playing the bunt pretty aggressively there, so I felt like we had a little bit of an open field there and was going to take our shot at that point, once he was ahead in the count, especially with him struggling to throw strikes to the first two guys and Grish’s ability to control the zone. I felt like that was the way to go.”
Earlier, the Yankees did prove Rowson right, as Jazz Chisholm Jr. broke their scoreless streak at 30.1 innings in the second frame with a sky-high, second-deck, solo homer off Jack Kochanowicz.
Chisholm’s shot just barely stayed fair, ending a stretch that had led to the Yankees being shut out in three consecutive games prior to Wednesday. Their nightmare over, the Yankees mobbed Chisholm in the dugout after he became the team’s first player to cross home plate since Saturday.
All that Jazz 🎷 pic.twitter.com/esMmyT7OXo
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 18, 2025
Chisholm’s 10th home run of the season also tied the game at one after Nolan Schanuel hit his own second-deck dinger in the first inning. However, Bellinger, who said the Yankees’ bats needed to “wake up” after Tuesday’s 4-0 loss, hit a solo home run in the fourth inning.
That gave the pinstripers their first lead since their 1-0 win over the Royals last Thursday.
The edge was short-lived, as Adell added to the barrage of bases-empty blasts when he crushed Ryan Yarbrough’s first pitch of the fifth into the visiting bullpen at Yankee Stadium.
Yarbrough totaled 5.1 innings, five hits, two earned runs, one walk, three strikeouts and 69 pitches while throwing to Ben Rice, who made his first big league start behind the plate. While the Yankees didn’t score much on Yarbrough’s watch, they had gone six straight games without offering their starters run support.
Kochanowicz, meanwhile, only allowed two hits — the homers — walked three and struck out eight over 5.1 innings.
While the righty entered the game with a 5.53 ERA, the highest of any qualified starter, Boone said the Yankees “moved the needle” when it came to making the Angels work for outs. Still, a breakthrough continued to elude his lineup.
“I felt like we got better swings off tonight than last night,” Boone added. “We hit some balls on the screws.”
With the middling Angels having already won the series, the Yankees will try to avoid a sweep in their own building on Thursday.
Carlos Rodón will start the matinée for the Yanks. He’ll be opposed by fellow left-hander Tyler Anderson, who held the Yankees’ now-struggling offense to one earned run over six innings on May 27.
“Everybody believes in each other,” Judge said. “We’re feeding off each other. We were close tonight. It just didn’t go our way, so now we gotta show up tomorrow and change it.”