LOS ANGELES — Sitting in the visiting dugout at Dodger Stadium, Aaron Boone praised Will Warren’s growth and ability to learn on the fly this season.
“I feel like Will, maybe as much or more than anyone, has done that,” Boone said as the rookie prepared for his first start at raucous Dodger Stadium. “The experience he’s gaining, he’s applying, and [it’s] been valuable. So today’s another one in that.
“And whatever happens, I feel like we’re seeing the continued emergence of a really good pitcher.”
While Warren has shown encouraging signs of development lately — he had a 2.05 ERA and 33 strikeouts over his previous four starts — that “really good pitcher” did not emerge at Chavez Ravine. Instead, Warren delivered one of the worst starts by a Yankees pitcher this season, allowing seven earned runs over 1.1 innings as the reigning world champs pummeled the Yankees in an 18-2 win for the home team.
After terrorizing Max Fried in Friday’s game, another Dodgers win, Shohei Ohtani started Warren’s afternoon off with a single. Teoscar Hernández followed with a strikeout, but Warren’s outing quickly spiraled from there.
Three straight singles from Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and Max Muncy made it a 2-0 game before Warren walked Andy Pages. Michael Conforto put another run on the board with a sac fly, while Tommy Edman added an RBI double after shooting a ball beneath Jorbit Vivas’ glove at third.
From there, Hyeseong Kim walked to load the bases, but Warren brought the frame to an end after 39 pitches when he got Ohtani to strike out in his second at-bat of the inning. The 25-year-old appeared understandably unhappy with himself as he slowly made his way toward the dugout.
The Ohtani strikeout didn’t give Warren any momentum in the second though, as he began the inning with walks to Hernández and Freeman. Two batters later, Muncy made it a 7-0 game with a three-run homer.
That sent Warren to the showers. The right-hander totaled 1.1 innings, six hits, seven earned runs, four walks, two strikeouts and 57 pitches in the shortest start of his young career.
Warren’s replacement didn’t fare much better, as Brent Headrick allowed an RBI double to Edman and a two-run homer to Kim before the second inning ended. That put the Yankees in a 10-0 hole.
Aaron Judge got the Yankees a run in the fourth, clobbering his 20th home run of the season off Landon Knack. While Judge now has the third-most homers in the majors — he hit another bases-empty blast in the eighth inning — his double-dinger day had little impact on the end result of Saturday’s game.
Knack didn’t permit another run over six innings. Meanwhile, the Dodgers scored a few more runs off Mark Leiter Jr. in the fifth when Freeman doubled and Muncy crushed his second three-run homer of the game.
Luke Weaver, working for the first time since May 26, then surrendered a solo homer to Pages in the seventh. Pablo Reyes, a seldom-used position player, was then asked to pitch the eighth. He served up a three-run homer to Dalton Rushing, the first of the catcher’s career.
With the series already lost, the Yankees will try to avoid being swept by the team that beat them in last year’s Fall Classic.
They’ll send Ryan Yarbrough to the mound on Sunday. Carlos Rodón could have taken the ball over the swingman, but the Yankees wanted extra rest for their No. 2 starter and have been impressed with the way Yarbrough has pitched since moving to the rotation.
Their offense, silenced on Saturday, will face the challenging Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The one-time Yankees target has been one of the best starters in baseball this season, posting a 1.97 ERA over 11 starts.
