The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Indians take two of three from Yankees
Ramirez leads way as Tribe roughs up Cole
NEW YORK » José Ramírez hit his 35th homer, had four hits and reached five times for the Indians, who scored double-digit runs for the third time in four games and beat the Yankees, 11-1, on Sept. 19.
Harold Ramírez hit a pair of two-run singles and drove in a career-high four runs before leaving as a precaution with a right shoulder injury. Ramírez banged into the right-field wall in the third inning on a drive Gio Urshela that hit the top of the fence and bounced over for a home run.
THE SCORE
INDIANS 11, YANKEES 1
“He’s such a good hitter,” Cleveland manager DeMarlo Hale said, “There’s a consistency to him. He will have ups and downs but he’s a big threat in the middle of the lineup.”
Gerrit Cole allowed seven runs over 5 2/3 innings. The Yankees were outscored, 224, in the final two games of a series against a team with a losing record.
New York is 7-15 since a 13-game winning streak, tied with 102-loss Baltimore for the worst record in the AL over that span.
It was the third time since 2016 New York allowed double-digit runs in consecutive games.
“We got to do better than this,” manager Aaron Boone said. “That’s an awful couple of days out there, and we got to get past it in a hurry and we got to play well. We got to go and play a complete game like we did Friday night, but we can’t do
that every two, every three games. We got to play really good baseball if we’re even going to think about being where we want to be.”
Cole (15-8) matched his 2021 high for earned runs and gave up 10 hits for the first time since June 30, 2017, with Pittsburgh. Cleveland went 5 for 11
against his four-seam fastball, his ERA rose to 3.03 and the Yankees dropped to 15-13 in his starts this year.
“I was feeling really confident and good going into it, I would assume that we have a lot of true professionals who probably go about their business the same way,” Cole said. “With that
said, it still sucks to lose. It still sucks to lose like this. It still sucks to like not really have a clear and concise answer for what the problem is so you can go ahead and fix it.”
Cole was so frustrated that during a third-inning mound visit with pitching coach Matt Blake, he turned and saw the scoreboard showed Toronto and Boston leading, then was caught by a television microphone uttering a profanity.
“I don’t recall what I was looking at. It was probably nothing,” Cole said.
Cole was making his second start since cutting short an appearance because of a tight hamstring. He hit Bradley Zimmer near a knee with an 0-2 pitch leading off and gave up two-run hits to Harold Ramirez on soft contact, an oppositefield single down the firstbase line in the first and a bloop that fell between center field Aaron Judge and left fielder Brett Gardner in a three-run third.
Roberto Pérez added an RBI single and Cole crouched and hung his head in frustration — and homered.
Yu Cheng contributed an RBI single in the seventh after third baseman DJ LeMahieu allowed Myles Straw’s grounder to go under his glove. Cleveland scored its final run when first baseman Anthony Rizzo fumbled a grounder by Ernie Clement for an error.
Cleveland rookie Eli Morgan (3-7) allowed one run and six hits in six innings.
“This was a good day, I get to enjoy it tonight,” Morgan said.
Family connection
Morgan’s father David has a connection to the Yankees. His father is the vice
president of digital sports of Sinclair Broadcast group, which owns the YES Network.
Up next
INDIANS » RHP Triston McKenzie (5-6, 4.28 ERA) starts the opener of a doubleheader against Kansas City on Sept. 20. Cleveland did not name a starter for the nightcap.