![\"Yankees](\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/1pHePJP3l-Z3FMirqAYVmaVei2k=\/0x0:1000x1000\/320x0\/filters:focal(0x0:1000x1000):format(webp):no_upscale()\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/25954093\/6e3810ca_0920_4ff5_95c1_0d09cd2bfcfd.jpg)
<\/picture> <\/span> Baseball Savant<\/cite><\/figure>\nIt was a breath of fresh air from a guy who entered play with a bloated 7.71 ERA. A quick five-and-dive is all the Yankees could ask for. Just like that, Carrasco\u2019s ERA is down to 5.94 \u2014 not pretty but more palatable from an emergency fifth starter.<\/p>\n
Leading off the bottom of the fifth, Trent Grisham jumped on a 3-2 fastball on the inside part of the plate for his fourth home run of the year to take the lead. Just two batters later, Ben Rice pulled an 0-1 cutter into the right-field seats for his fifth bomb of 2025 to make it 3-1. After a Judge strikeout, Austin Wells ambushed a middle-in fastball for his first long ball since the opening series for the Yankees\u2019 fourth home run in the last two innings.<\/p>\n
When the dust settled, Lugo had given up four home runs and the Yankees led 4-1 after five.<\/p>\n
Fernando Cruz was first out of the bullpen in the sixth and mowed down the top of the Royals\u2019 order, generating five whiffs and getting two of them on nasty strikeouts of Witt and Pasquantino.<\/p>\n
After he did the same to the Royals\u2019 captain, Tim Hill came on and made quick work of Massey and Maikel Garcia before turning it over to Luke Weaver for the eighth. Despite still not being quite there velocity-wise, he worked around a two-out walk and put up another zero.<\/p>\n
As a result of the Yankees attacking early in the count all night, Lugo managed to pitch into the seventh despite a subpar outing. John Schreiber got into a jam in relief in that seventh inning, but struck out Wells to strand the runner.<\/p>\n
Paul Goldschmidt stayed blisteringly hot against left-handed pitching with an eighth inning double off of Daniel Lynch IV. While Goldy is hitting .367 normally, he\u2019s a ludicrous 12-for-21 with four extra-base hits against lefties. The Yankees stranded their first baseman at second base and handed the ball over to Devin Williams, who was looking for his first save since Opening Day.<\/p>\n
Williams coughed up a hit to Witt and walked Perez to get in a jam, but he induced a trio of fly balls that stayed in the ballpark to nail down his second save.<\/p>\n
It was a great game for Yankees pitching, holding everyone not named Bobby Witt Jr. a hitless 0-for-25.<\/p>\n
Ace Max Fried is on the mound tomorrow as the Yankees look for the series win. Michael Wacha will get the ball for the Royals with first pitch from Fried at 7:05pm ET.<\/p>\n
Box Score<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A quartet of Yankees lefties left the yard in Monday\u2019s win over KC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":48392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n