ARLINGTON -- The Yankees have their captain back now, but the ship is still running aground.
Reigning American League MVP Aaron Judge returned to the lineup Tuesday night, but neither the Yankees' slugger nor any of his teammates had an answer for Rangers ace Nathan Eovaldi in a 2-0 loss -- the Yankees’ fifth consecutive defeat.
"We’ve got some work to do,” said Judge, one of eight Yankees who went hitless against Eovaldi. “A lot of things to clean up. But the boys in here are fired up to change all that and get things right. We’ve got a great ballclub in here, so ... it’s just a lot of mistakes all around, some mental mistakes and physical mistakes. But we’ve got to fix them. We’ve got to fix them now.”
Easier said than done against Eovaldi, who retired 24 of the 25 batters he faced, tossing eight scoreless innings, striking out six and yielding only Anthony Volpe's third-inning double.
“We’ve faced him a lot over the years -- we've had some success, but he's had a lot of nights where he's really pitched well against us,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “This was right up there. We were getting it in play some, but really not a lot of hard contact at all. ... he was in command. We just didn't mount much at all.”
The Yankees had anxiously waited for the day when Judge would return from the injured list after suffering an elbow injury that kept him out of the previous 10 games. Their anxiety during that wait was compounded by the fact that they went 4-6 without Judge in the lineup.
A jolt to the Yankees’ offense Tuesday would’ve helped -- but it didn’t happen against Eovaldi, who retired 24 of the 25 batters he faced in eight scoreless innings, allowing only one hit. Eovaldi is four innings pitched shy of qualifying to be the American League leader in ERA, at 1.38.
For Judge, Tuesday was a case of bad timing in more than one sense. Not only did the slugger have to take his first game swings since July 25 against one of the game’s most dominant pitchers, but he also appeared out of sync at the plate as he went 0-for-3, striking out twice.
Against Eovaldi, Judge saw 12 pitches total, four in each at-bat. Judge struck out on high-80s splitters the first two times up. Both pitches were out of the strike zone, about shin-high on the 6-foot-7 Judge. In his third at-bat, Judge grounded out to shortstop -- also on a pitch outside the strike zone, an inside fastball.
"He's coming off the IL, so I want to make sure that I'm attacking him as quick as I can,” Eovaldi said. “I didn't want to fall behind in any of those counts when facing him because he's an extremely talented hitter, and he can hit one out of the park at any time.”
After Volpe’s double, one of only two Yankees hits on the night, Eovaldi retired 16 hitters in a row to conclude his outing.
“You’ve really got to be disciplined when you're facing a guy like that,” Judge said. “He made some tough pitches against us.”
As the DH, Judge didn’t have as much impact on Tuesday’s game as he usually does when he’s in right field, and that won’t change this series. Boone said before Tuesday’s loss that Judge will probably begin a throwing program on Wednesday with the hope that he might return to fielding during the Yankees’ upcoming homestand, which begins Friday.
But right now, the Yankees may need more help in the back-end of the bullpen than in the outfield.
New York's relief corps has shouldered the loss in three of the five games of the current losing skid, and closer Devin Williams has had the hardest luck of any of New York’s relievers during that stretch.
On Tuesday, one night after he blew the save with two outs in the ninth inning on a Joc Pederson home run, Williams allowed two earned runs in the eighth as the Yankees’ precarious hold on a scoreless tie finally disintegrated. Williams gave up a leadoff double to Adolis García on a line drive that left fielder Jasson Domínguez couldn’t run down.
"He got a glove on it -- you know, obviously it's hit hard, it’s a tough play,” Boone said. “I felt like he didn't get a great jump on it ... tough play over his head, though.”
Williams then walked Pederson and Wyatt Langford before Rowdy Tellez drove both runners home with a blooper to center -- the kind of break the Yankees desperately need, but haven’t gotten, during their recent woes.
“It takes one at-bat, takes one pitch -- that's the beauty of this game, and also the scary thing about this game,” Judge said.