WEST SACRAMENTO -- The Yankees couldn’t make it a six-game winning streak.
But they sure made it interesting.
Down by five runs entering the ninth inning, the Yankees threatened to upend Saturday night’s game against the Athletics at Sutter Health Park when Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger drew consecutive walks, all of which forced in runs, to cut the deficit to two and put the go-ahead run on board.
Finally, though, Jazz Chisholm Jr. grounded out to first base to end the threat and the Yankees’ 6-4 loss to the A’s at Sutter Health Park.
"We put up a good fight,” said third baseman Ryan McMahon, whose one-out bloop single into center field sparked the ninth-inning rally. “You can’t win them all, but it was good to at least put some pressure on them and show them that we’re never out of anything.”
Catcher J.C. Escarra followed McMahon’s base hit with a walk, and after an Anthony Volpe strikeout A’s reliever Jack Perkins walked Trent Grisham to load the bases. The A’s replaced Perkins with Scott Barlow, who fared no better when he walked Rice, Judge and Bellinger in order as a sellout crowd savored the drama.
But A’s first baseman Nick Kurtz put an end to the inning, the game and the Yankees’ win streak, snagging a 91.3 mph chopper from Chisholm and jogging to first to record the final out.
It was Kurtz who delivered the biggest blow of the night for the A’s with a two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh off Yankees starter Ryan Weathers. Rather than trailing just 3-1 with Judge set to lead off the eighth, the Yankees found themselves down four runs, and the effect was palpable.
As Kurtz’s first-pitch dinger off an up-and-in fastball sailed just over Grisham’s glove in center field, Weathers sank to a knee on the mound and Grisham slumped into a sitting position on the warning track. It was Weathers’ final pitch of the night.
“He’s a really good player,” Weathers said. “I could have spun him there, but hindsight’s 20-20. If I’m looking at it, I probably should have thrown a different pitch or at least executed a little bit better.”
It was the third home run allowed by Weathers, following a two-run blast by Shea Langeliers in the first inning and a Tyler Soderstrom solo shot in the sixth. The southpaw was charged with five runs, snapping a streak of six straight quality starts by Yankees pitchers that dated back to Gerrit Cole on May 22.
When Weathers walked Colby Thomas after getting the first two outs of the seventh, manager Aaron Boone jogged out to the mound for a visit before Kurtz’s at-bat. But even though Weathers had already thrown a career-high 106 pitches and right-hander Camilo Doval was warming in the bullpen, Boone had no intention of pulling his starter.
"I don’t question leaving him in there for Kurtz,” Boone said. “I’m going to take my left-on-left shot there with two outs. After he got those first two and had thrown quite a few pitches to that point, that’s the one where maybe I go to Doval there.”
The decision might have been forgotten had the Yankees’ bats stayed hot, but that wasn’t the case, ninth-inning charge aside.
New York left 10 runners on base, stranding two men in the fourth when Austin Wells flied out to center field and two more in the seventh when Rice whiffed on a 3-2 curveball for the inning’s final out. Before the ninth, the Yankees’ lone run came when Chisholm stole second base in the fourth and an error allowed Bellinger to race home from third.
One big swing by Judge with two outs in the fifth appeared to flip the script, but the Yankees captain’s 362-foot drive to right field came up just short. It would have been a homer in 16 Major League ballparks -- including Yankee Stadium -- but Sutter Health Park kept it to an inning-ending flyout.
It wasn’t until the last moment that the Yankees were able to put pressure on the A’s pitching staff, with Rice, Judge and Bellinger each working full counts and taking payoff pitches well out of the zone. Chisholm worked the count to 2-2 before going after a fastball on the inside edge of the plate, grounding out to bring a suddenly wild ballgame to an end and snapping the Yanks’ five-game win streak.
“Love the finish,” Boone said. “Just couldn’t quite get over the hump there.”