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This time, the torpedo came close, but not close enough.
The Yankees struggled to score against Zac Gallen from the Arizona Diamondbacks. In a surprising turn of events, their bats came alive in the ninth inning. Anthony Volpe hit a three-run home run off A.J. Puk, giving the team hope.
Unfortunately, despite their late rally, the Yankees fell short with a final score of 4-3. Austin Wells’ pop out and Jasson Domínguez’s strikeout ended their comeback attempt. This marked their second consecutive loss after an impressive three-game winning streak.
Gallen was outstanding on the mound, allowing only three hits in 6 ²/₃ innings while striking out an impressive 13 batters. The Diamondbacks also capitalized on Carlos Rodón’s struggles in the first two innings before he found his rhythm and settled down.
Rodón’s excellent final four innings weren’t enough to overcome his rocky start, when he allowed four runs in the first two frames.
And the Yankees were silent until the bottom of the ninth, when Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge opened with base hits.
But Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s fly ball to right died in the wind before Volpe gave the Yankees some hope.
The big blow for Arizona came just three batters into the game, as Lourdes Gurriel Jr. slammed a two-run homer in the top of the first.
The blast reached the second deck in left off an 0-2 four-seam fastball. And it came after a leadoff walk to Ketel Marte, fresh off signing a six-year, $116 million contract extension.
Rodón’s struggles didn’t end there.
He issued a walk to start the second, this time to Eugenio Suárez.
The lefty then walked off the mound after falling 2-0 behind the next batter, Gabriel Moreno. Rodón couldn’t handle Moreno’s comeback later in the at-bat, and it went for a single.
The runners advanced on a Jake McCarthy groundout, and Arizona took a 3-0 lead on Geraldo Perdomo’s sacrifice fly to center.
A base hit up the middle by Marte scored Moreno to make it 4-0.
The Yankees threatened for the first time in the bottom of the inning, with a Chisholm flare single to start, then a one-out liner to right by Wells that nearly decapitated Chisholm before sending him to third.
But Domínguez and Ben Rice each whiffed to strand the runners.
Rodón escaped back-to-back walks in the third by inducing an inning-ending double play from Josh Naylor.
That began a stretch of 10 straight retired by Rodón to end his night, as he shook off getting drilled with a liner off his right arm by Marte in the fifth.
Gallen, meanwhile, set down 11 in a row after Wells’ double before Oswaldo Cabrera reached on a wild pitch after striking out to open the bottom of the sixth.
The Yankees didn’t get another hit until Wells’ single with two outs in the seventh, which ended Gallen’s night.
Judge, so unstoppable in the first three games against the Brewers that they eventually stopped pitching to him, whiffed in five straight at-bats going back to Tuesday’s loss before his ninth-inning single.
He wasn’t alone, as Gallen struck out 13, including seven of the final nine batters he faced.
The Yankees got three shutout innings of relief from Yoendrys Gómez to help preserve the bullpen, as they look to avoid a three-game sweep by the Diamondbacks on Thursday.