Yankees one‑hit, shut out
The Yankees were one‑hit and blanked by the Athletics in their first series loss of the season, as Jeffrey Springs dominated and Aaron Judge’s slump became a growing talking point. (pinstripealley.com)(nydailynews.com)
For 6 1/3 innings on Thursday afternoon, the Yankees did not have a hit, and by the time Ben Rice lined a single in the seventh, the only run of the game was already on the board for the Athletics. Jeffrey Springs and two relievers finished a 1-0 win that gave New York its first series loss of 2026. (apnews.com) The game turned on one mistake in the fourth inning, when Tyler Soderstrom hit Ryan Weathers’ pitch into the right-field seats for his sixth home run of the season. Weathers still gave the Yankees six innings with seven strikeouts, but one solo shot was enough because New York’s lineup never got moving. (pinstripealley.com) Springs is not a soft-tossing trick pitcher surviving on luck. Major League Baseball listed him at a 2.38 earned run average entering the start, and he worked seven innings against New York while allowing one hit and two walks. (mlb.com) The Yankees tried to stack the lineup with right-handed bats against the left-handed Springs, and it still did not matter. The New York Daily News reported that Aaron Boone loaded the order from the right side, but Springs kept the ball off barrels until Rice’s single broke up the no-hit bid. (nydailynews.com) What made the loss feel bigger than one bad afternoon was the timing. New York had already gone hitless over the final 5 1/3 innings of Wednesday’s 3-2 loss, so the Yankees went 11 2/3 innings without a hit before Rice finally reached. (sports.yahoo.com) Aaron Judge is getting most of the attention because he is Aaron Judge, and his early line has dipped hard after a fast first week. ESPN’s game log showed Judge at.222 with 3 home runs and 15 strikeouts through 11 games after Thursday, and he went 0-for-4 in this one. (espn.com) That does not mean the Yankees suddenly have a Judge-only problem. The whole offense produced one single, drew only two walks, and never advanced a runner past first base in a 1-0 game at Yankee Stadium. (apnews.com) The Athletics side of this matters too, because this was not a fluke bunt-and-bullpen steal. The Associated Press reported it was the Athletics’ first series win at Yankee Stadium since 2016, and they did it with clean starting pitching, one middle-of-the-order swing, and a bullpen that protected the final six outs. (apnews.com) So the picture after 12 games is not that the Yankees are collapsing at 8-4. It is that a team that opened the year looking loud and deep just got shown how thin a game can become when one starter controls the strike zone and the middle of the order goes quiet for two straight days. (espn.com)
