LOS ANGELES — Sitting in the visiting dugout at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, 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.
“I left balls over the heart of the plate, didn’t get ahead, and they capitalized,” Warren said after the bloodbath. “I was on my heels. I talk about executing and being aggressive in the zone, and today it didn’t go that way for me and they took advantage of that.
“They’re good, but at the end of the day, if we execute and attack in the zone and get ahead, I think we have success. Today, that didn’t happen.”
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.
“When stuff starts rolling, you try to kill the momentum on their side,” Warren said. “I think I left too many balls over the middle of the plate and the momentum didn’t stop.”
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 carry into the second though, as Warren 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.
“He’s pitched so well for us this year, and obviously today wasn’t his day,” Paul Goldschmidt said. “Give credit to the Dodgers offense. He probably made a few mistakes without going back and looking at everything, but I thought they were hitting some good pitches, hitting the ball the other way. Just didn’t really chase out of the zone. They have one of the best offenses, and they did a good job.”
In addition to the seven earned runs, Warren totaled six hits, four walks, two strikeouts and 57 pitches in the shortest start of his young career. Asked which negative emotions he felt after the game, the right-hander replied, “All of the above.”
“Learn to hate that feeling,” he continued. “And then when you take the mound in five days, you don’t want to feel that again. It’s on to the next one.”
Warren added that he had no intentions of flushing his disappointing day. Instead, he plans to learn from the game, echoing sentiments that Fried shared after his own clunker on Friday.
“I’m gonna let it soak in,” Warren said. “It hurts. It sucks. I let the team down.”
Added Boone: “The one thing he’s shown here early in his big league career is he has learned a lot from every situation, from adversity through some success. This is a hard game, and you’re going to take your lumps sometimes. Will will be better for having gone through that and grow from that. He has all the equipment to move right through this and be excellent.”
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 them 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. He also walked three and struck out six.
“He did a really good job of mixing, and maybe [we] chased a little bit too much,” Cody Bellinger said after going 1-for-4. “It was just kind of the way the game went today.”
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.
The Yankees then asked Pablo Reyes, a seldom-used position player, 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 on Sunday.
They’ll send Ryan Yarbrough to the mound. 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.
“Every game is the same,” Bellinger said, downplaying the notion that this World Series rematch serves as a barometer for both clubs. “You want to come out and you want to win. Losing the first two games of any series is tough. So all we can do now is wake up tomorrow and try and get a win.”
Originally Published: May 31, 2025 at 10:29 PM EDT