Amed Rosario had the kind of afternoon at Yankee Stadium on Friday that gets people fired. Two errors in back-to-back innings. A 6-0 loss to the Red Sox in Game 1. A stadium full of fans who were already skeptical about his roster spot before he showed up on the field.
Rosario, 30, is hitting .225 this season. He was brought back on a one-year deal after being acquired from the Nationals in a 2025 trade, and he has largely underwhelmed since. Friday did nothing to help his case.
The Fourth Inning Play
In the top of the fourth, Boston’s Heliot Ramos hit a fly ball to center that Ceddanne Rafaela misplayed. That was Boston’s mistake. What happened next was New York’s. Rosario, running on contact, misread the entire sequence, kept going, and was thrown out at the plate on a play that should have ended with him standing safely on third or scoring easily.
It was a baserunning gaffe, but it was really a heads-up gaffe. A veteran should not misread a big-league outfielder botching a routine flyball.
The Fifth Inning Play
Then in the fifth, Rosario tried to double off Adley Rutschman at first base and spiked the throw. Not a soft one-hop. A full-on dagger into the dirt. Runners moved up. The inning stayed alive. The stadium groaned in a way you rarely hear at Yankee Stadium in August.
Two innings, two mistakes, one from the bat side of the ledger and one from the glove side. When you are already carrying a .225 batting average, that is how you get your name into the trending column on Yankee Twitter, and none of it will be complimentary.
The DFA Talk Is Loud
Yankees fans are calling for Rosario to be designated for assignment. That is going to happen every time a veteran struggles in this market, but the volume Friday was legitimate. The Yankees are in the middle of a playoff race. They cannot carry passengers, and Rosario looked like a passenger through both games.
To his credit, he ended up on the winning side of Game 2, a 9-2 New York victory. But splitting a doubleheader with Boston at home is not what the Yankees drew up in a season where the AL East is a knife fight. And Rosario is not the reason they won the nightcap. He is the reason people were furious after the opener.
What the Yankees Actually Need
The infield depth conversation in the Bronx has been ongoing all summer. The team has been experimenting with different combinations, giving reps to younger players, and hoping someone would emerge as a reliable option. Rosario was supposed to be one of those reliable options. Instead he has become the veteran whose leash is being publicly measured.
Aaron Boone will defend him. He always defends his guys. And there is a version of Rosario, the one who has hit .270-plus for multiple seasons in the past, that would be useful in the right role. That version has not shown up much in 2026.
The Yankees have real problems. Rosario is not the biggest one. But when you commit two errors in a shutout loss to the Red Sox in Game 1 of a doubleheader in front of a national TV audience, you become the loudest one for at least 24 hours.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
