Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again
-
Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — A blunder that typifies the current state of the New York Yankees, who find themselves in the midst of their second six-game losing streak in three weeks, happened in front of 41,401 fans at Citi Field on Saturday, and almost nobody noticed.
The Yankees were jogging off the field after securing the third out of the fourth inning of their 12-6 loss to the Mets when shortstop Anthony Volpe, as is standard for teams across baseball at the end of innings, threw the ball to right fielder Aaron Judge as he crossed into the infield from right field.
Only Judge wasn’t looking, and the ball nailed him in the head, knocking his sunglasses off and leaving a small cut near his right eye. The wound required a bandage to stop the bleeding, but Judge stayed in the game.
“Confusion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I didn’t know what happened initially. [It just] felt like something happened. Of course I was a little concerned.”
Avoiding an injury to the best player in baseball was on the Yankees’ very short list of positives in another sloppy, draining defeat to their crosstown rivals. With the loss, the Yankees, who held a three-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East standings entering June 30, find themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Rays for second place three games behind the Blue Jays heading into Sunday’s Subway Series finale.
The nosedive has been fueled by messy defense and a depleted pitching staff that has encountered a wall.
“It’s been a terrible week,” said Boone, who before the game announced starter Clarke Schmidt will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.
For the second straight day, the Mets capitalized on mistakes and cracked timely home runs. After slugging three homers in Friday’s series opener, the Mets hit three more Saturday — a grand slam in the first inning from Brandon Nimmo to take a 4-0 lead and two home runs from Pete Alonso to widen the gap.
Nimmo’s blast — his second grand slam in four days — came after Yankees left fielder Jasson Dominguez misplayed a ball hit by the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first inning. On Friday, he misread Nimmo’s line drive and watched it sail over his head for a double. On Saturday, he was slow to react to Starling Marte’s flyball in the left-center field gap and braked without catching or stopping it, allowing Marte to advance to second for a double. Yankees starter Carlos Rodon then walked two batters to load the bases for Nimmo, who yanked a mistake, a 1-2 slider over the wall.
“That slider probably needs to be down,” said Rodon, who allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings. “A lot of misses today and they punished them.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing woes at third base — a position the Yankees have asked him to play to accommodate DJ LeMahieu at second base — continued in the second inning when he fielded Tyrone Taylor’s groundball and sailed a toss over first baseman Cody Bellinger’s head. Taylor was given second base and scored moments later on Marte’s RBI single.
The Yankees were charged with their second error in the Mets’ four-run seventh inning when center fielder Trent Grisham charged Francisco Lindor’s single up the middle and had it bounce off the heel of his glove.
The mistake allowed a run to score from second base without a throw, extending the Mets lead back to three runs after the Yankees had chipped their deficit, and allowed a heads-up Lindor to advance to second base. Lindor later scored on Alonso’s second home run, a three-run blast off left-hander Jayvien Sandridge in the pitcher’s major league debut.
“Just got to play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s fundamentals. Making a routine play, routine. It’s just the little things. That’s what it kind of comes down to. But every good team goes through a couple bumps in the road.”
This six-game losing skid has looked very different from the Yankees’ first. That rough patch, consisting of losses to the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, was propelled by offensive troubles. The Yankees scored six runs in the six games and gave up just 16. This time, run prevention is the issue; the Yankees have scored 34 runs and surrendered 54 in four games against the Blue Jays in Toronto and two in Queens.
“The offense is starting to swing the bat, put some runs on the board,” Boone said. “The pitching, which has kind of carried us a lot this season, has really, really struggled this week. We haven’t caught the ball as well as I think we should.
“So, look, when you live it and you’re going through it, it sucks, it hurts. But you got to be able to handle it. You got to be able to deal with it. You got to be able to weather it and come out of this and grow.”
Sports
Cal Raleigh hits home run No. 60! A monthly breakdown of the slugger’s historic 2025 campaign
-
David Schoenfield
The list of MLB players who never hit 60 home runs in a single season includes many of the game’s all-time greatest sluggers: Willie Mays, Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Jim Thome and Jimmie Foxx. Heck, Henry Aaron never hit 50. Neither did Frank Robinson or Reggie Jackson or Lou Gehrig or countless other inner-circle Hall of Famers.
But Cal Raleigh, the quiet, humble catcher for the Seattle Mariners, is now part of one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs: 60 home runs in one season. It is an unfathomable, improbable, astonishing performance. It is baseball at its most fun: the unexpected. He has given Mariners fans — all fans, really — something to root for on a nightly basis.
He joins a club that includes Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Aaron Judge, Roger Maris and Babe Ruth — three New York Yankees and three players with tainted legacies. Raleigh most obviously resembles Maris, the quiet, shy slugger from North Dakota who recoiled at all the attention he received from the press when he chased down Ruth’s record in 1961 and finished with 61 home runs.
Maris, however, was at least the reigning AL MVP entering the 1961 season. Raleigh, on the other hand, had never been an All-Star before 2025. When he recently hit his 55th and 56th home runs in the same game to break Mickey Mantle’s single-season record for home runs by a switch-hitter and tie Griffey’s franchise record, he seemed almost embarrassed to discuss the achievement.
“I feel like my name shouldn’t be in the same sentence as those guys, Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr.,” Raleigh said. “I don’t really have words for it. I don’t really know what to say. I’m sure one day it will set in, but for now it’s just ‘keep it going.'”
He has kept it going — all the way to the 60-home-run mark (in another double-homer performance, naturally). With his 60th blast of the season now in the books, let’s look back at each month of his remarkable 2025 campaign.
March/April
Number of home runs: 10
Longest home run: 422 feet in Cincinnati off Emilio Pagan (April 17)
Most clutch home run: Two-run blast off the Texas Rangers‘ Chris Martin in the bottom of the eighth to give the Mariners a 5-3 victory (April 11)
Raleigh didn’t begin the season giving any indication he was about to embark upon a record-setting campaign. In his first 13 games, he hit .184 with two home runs and just three RBIs. Indeed, the biggest news surrounding Raleigh at this point was the Mariners’ announcement the day before the regular season began that they had signed him to a six-year, $105 million extension that began with the 2025 season and runs through 2030, with a player vesting option for 2031. Interestingly, Raleigh had switched agents in the offseason, changing from Scott Boras to Excel Sports Management. Boras, of course, has a reputation for pushing his clients to free agency — and, certainly now, Raleigh’s deal looks like a relative bargain for the Mariners.
But the home run off Martin on April 11 got Raleigh going on a hot streak. He homered six times in six games and eight times the rest of the month. The home run off Pagan was another big one: That led off the top of the ninth and Randy Arozarena followed with another home run to tie the game, which the Mariners won in 10 innings.
We didn’t know it at the time, but the chase for 60 was on.
May
Number of home runs: 12
Longest home run: 432 feet in Texas off Jack Leiter (May 2)
Most clutch home run: Two-out, two-run HR off the Houston Astros‘ Bryan Abreu in the seventh inning to turn a 3-3 tie into a 5-3 victory (May 23)
In the Mariners’ first game of May, Raleigh homered twice off Leiter: The first one was his longest blast of the month, off a first-pitch slider. The second was a grand slam, off a 2-2 curveball — the first of his three grand slams in 2025. Raleigh then hit a little lull, going homerless for eight games, but then really got hot, hitting .313 with 10 home runs over his final 18 games in May, including two more two-homer games, against the Washington Nationals on May 27 and the Minnesota Twins on May 30. The game against the Twins pushed his OPS over 1.000, and while it was still just a third of the way through the season, MVP talk began percolating.
June
Number of home runs: 11
Longest home run: 440 feet at Wrigley Field off Colin Rea (June 22)
Most clutch home run: Two-run shot off the Chicago Cubs‘ Caleb Thielbar with two outs in the seventh inning to give the Mariners a 6-4 lead (June 20)
Raleigh began June with a home run, homered again on June 5, homered twice on June 7, went seven games without a home run and then blasted six over another six-game stretch, including a two-homer game against the Cubs on June 20. From May 16 to June 23, Raleigh had his hottest stretch of the season, hitting .313/.401/.794 with 19 home runs and 40 RBIs in 34 games.
The key to his success:
-
He improved dramatically against left-handers this season: He has 22 home runs and a 1.030 OPS from the right side of the plate compared to 13 and a .696 OPS in 2024.
-
He’s really good at pulling fly balls.
The latter skill has allowed Raleigh to punch his ticket to 60, even if he doesn’t hit his home runs quite as far as the season’s other big sluggers — Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber and Judge. Here’s a breakdown of each player’s home runs in 2025, with Raleigh lagging behind the others in home runs of both 400-plus feet and 425-plus feet:
As you can see, however, Raleigh’s ability to pull the ball more often means his rate of home runs to fly balls remains extraordinarily high, just like the other three.
July
Number of home runs: 9
Longest home run: 440 feet in Seattle off the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ Bailey Falter (July 4)
Most clutch home run: A solo homer off the Milwaukee Brewers‘ Nick Mears in the sixth inning — the only run in a 1-0 victory (July 22)
The season of Cal continued in July. He hit a second homer off Falter on July 4 and added another two-homer game against the Tigers just before the All-Star break, which he entered hitting .259/.377/.634 with 38 home runs in 94 games. The Mariners had played 96 games at the break, so that put Raleigh on a 64-homer pace and made him the talk of baseball at the Home Run Derby.
Which, of course, he won, becoming the first catcher to win the Derby and doing it with his dad Todd Sr. pitching and his 15-year-old brother Todd Jr. doing the catching. In one of the season’s most charming moments, a video of an 8-year-old Cal singing, “I’m the Home Run Derby champ! I’m the man, I’m the man, oh yeah, oh yeah” went viral leading up to the contest.
“That video is crazy,” the always understated Raleigh said from Truist Park in Atlanta. “I mean, I don’t know where they found that thing in the archives. Yeah, just kind of surreal. You don’t think you’re going to win it. You don’t think you’ll ever get invited. Then you get invited. The fact that you win it with your family, super special. Just what a night.”
August
Number of home runs: 8
Longest home run: 448 feet in Seattle off the Athletics’ Jacob Lopez (Aug. 24)
Most clutch home run: Three-run HR off the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Griffin Jax with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, turning a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 win (Aug. 8)
Raleigh continued a slump at the plate this month. After hitting .304 in May and .300 in June, he hit .194 in July and .173 in August, although the home runs kept coming at a steady pace. His most clutch home run of the season came at home against the Rays. Facing tough right-handed reliever Jax with runners at first and second, Raleigh got ahead in the count with two balls. Jax could have just pitched around him with two outs but threw a sweeper at the bottom of the strike zone — not a terrible pitch but not quite on the outside corner where Jax wanted it — and Raleigh crushed it 417 feet over the center-field wall.
Along the way, he hit his 49th home run to break Salvador Perez‘s record set in 2021 for most home runs by a primary catcher. That was part of a two-homer game in which he hit Nos. 48 and 49, and the next day he hit No. 50. He finished the month with a five-game homerless stretch, however, so entered September with 50 home runs in the 137 games the Mariners had played up to that point, which left him on a 59-homer pace.
September
Number of home runs: 10
Longest home run: 426 feet in Atlanta off Rolddy Munoz (Sept. 7)
Most clutch home run: First-inning two-run shot off the Los Angeles Angels‘ Kyle Hendricks (Sept. 14)
Raleigh hit just one home in the first four games of September, which meant he’d hit just one home run in a nine-game stretch — a period in which the Mariners had gone 2-7 and were barely hanging on to the third wild-card spot by a half-game over the Texas Rangers with three other teams within 2½ games. Raleigh would hit two garbage-time home runs against the Atlanta Braves on the road: a ninth-inning shot in a 10-2 win and then the ninth-inning three-run blast off Munoz in an 18-2 victory.
Suddenly, Raleigh’s chase for 60 and the Mariners’ pursuit of a division title were back on. Starting Sept. 7, the Mariners won 14 of 15 games heading into Tuesday’s series against the Colorado Rockies, as Raleigh hit .286/.437/.714 with seven home runs. He had his 10th two-homer game of the season against the Kansas City Royals to pass Mantle’s switch-hitting record and tie Griffey’s club record (he broke Griffey’s record with a blast against the Astros on Saturday). With his 11th — which came Wednesday night, sending Raleigh to the 60-mark, he tied Hank Greenberg (1938), Sosa (1998) and Judge (2022) for the record for two-homer games in one season.
I don’t know if 8-year-old Cal Raleigh ever envisioned something like this happening, but here’s the thing that has endeared Raleigh to Mariners fans and made him one of the most popular players in franchise history: He’ll be much happier about the Mariners winning their first division title since 2001 on Wednesday than hitting his 60th home run.
CLEVELAND — George Valera hit a two-run homer in the third inning, Jose Ramírez had a two-run double in the seventh and the Cleveland Guardians became the first major league team to overcome a deficit of 15½ games and take the lead in either division or league play, beating the Detroit Tigers 5-1 on Wednesday night.
Cleveland (86-72) has a one-game lead over Detroit (85-73) with four games to play. The Guardians also have the tiebreaker by taking the season series.
The 1914 Boston Braves were 15 games back in the National League on July 4 and rallied to win by 10½ games according to Elias Sports Bureau. Since baseball went to division play in 1969, the biggest deficit overcome was 14 games by the 1978 New York Yankees to win the AL East.
Tanner Bibee (12-11) won his third straight start and allowed only one run in six innings, extending the streak of Guardians starters allowing two or fewer runs to 19 games. They are the first since the 2019 Tampa Bay Rays to go at least 19 games.
Detroit has dropped eight straight and is out of first place for the first time since April 22, when the Guardians led by a half-game. Jack Flaherty (8-15) took the loss.
The Tigers took a 1-0 lead in the third when Parker Meadows‘ sacrifice fly drove in Dillon Dingler.
Brayan Rocchio led off the Cleveland third with a double and then scored when Valera’s drive appeared short of the wall in center before it was deflected off the glove of Meadows.
Ramírez broke it open in the eighth with a two-run double to right field that deflected off the glove of Detroit second baseman Gleyber Torres. He became the second player in Cleveland franchise history to reach 3,000 total bases. The other was Earl Averill with 3,201 from 1929 through ’41.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment12 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024