Eli Willits wound up playing four games for the Fredericksburg Nationals to begin his professional career, and he could hardly have impressed more. Willits collected six hits - including an infield hit on a rocket to the…first baseman??? - in fourteen at-bats, scoring four runs and driving in three, stealing a base, and walking twice, all while playing outstanding defense at shortstop. Here is where I remind you that Willits is 17 years old and in a normal world would be settling into his senior year of high school. ‘Tis a small sample, to be sure, but the average age in the Carolina League is still almost 21 years old, so for a teenager to wow that much in his debut series is something.

Well, Mystique and Aura got the better of Brad Lord and the Nationals last night, as the Yankees broke the game open against Lord in the fifth to hand him his first truly bad start of the season - Lord departed after four and a third in a 7-0 hole following a Jazz Chisholm Jr. moonshot as the capper to the Yankees’ five-run inning. Two innings later Jasson Domínguez took Cole Henry deep with two men on to put the Evil Empire into double digits.

On the offensive side of things, meanwhile, the Nats got themselves into trouble on the bases, getting picked off (Jacob Young) and caught stealing (Josh Bell) in the third and fourth innings to squelch a couple of chances to put something together (Bell’s steal was part of a coordinated play with CJ Abrams stealing home - but I will never understand playing for one run in Yankee Stadium). It took until the ninth inning for the Nats to do anything of consequence - all of it with two outs after Bell grounded into his second double play of the evening following a Luis García Jr. single. After the Bell GIDP, Riley Adams and Paul DeJong singled, followed by Dylan Crews and Robert Hassell III working walks to break the seal against tiring Yankees reliever Yerry de los Santos (from the beautiful Samaná Peninsula in the Dominican Republic) and force a pitching change. In came Mark Leiter Jr., and out to the bullpen went [checks notes] Jacob Young??? Young’s first long ball of the year made the final margin of 10-5 more respectable than it really was, but was a fun moment for him and the team.

There was a play yesterday that didn’t happen in the top of the fourth that could have potentially changed the whole complexion of the game before the Yanks’ fifth-inning slugfest, one for which the broadcast team rightly called out CJ Abrams. With one out, Abrams was running on the pitch when Bell singled to center. The Yankees - as was proven emphatically in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series - have individually good defenders but are frequently lackadaisical as a team with the leather, and third base coach Ricky Gutierrez was prepared to wave Abrams home all the way from first (anticipating that center fielder Trent Grisham would lob the ball into second base). That is exactly what happened, but because Abrams spent most of his 90 feet between second and third base looking over his shoulder at Grisham - who was never, ever going to try and gun him down at third - he never picked up his third base coach, and was stranded there after Adams popped out and Bell got caught stealing. Good teams (and teams trying to be good) don’t mail in moments like that where they can take advantage of something, and Abrams’ failure to be in a position to score on that play felt like yet another out on the bases for a team that must lead the majors in those.

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