David Lennon: Yankees gain split with Dodgers, but their offense remains uninspiring
The Yankees’ Jazz Chisholm Jr. reacts as he scores on his solo home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the eighth inning in the second game of a split doubleheader at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Bringing up Aaron Judge’s absence was back in vogue this weekend after the latest update on his rib stress fracture wasn’t much of an update at all, other than to brace for a September return, which now seems like the new best-case scenario.
And the idea of the Yankees being a playoff-quality offense without their three-time MVP for the next six weeks or so becomes more far-fetched by the minute.
Sunday’s doubleheader split with the Dodgers didn’t provide any evidence to the contrary, even after Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s tiebreaking home run to leftfield in the eighth inning delivered a desperately needed 2-1 win in Game 2.
Staying on a familiar theme, the Yankees went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position and stranded 11 in Game 2. Holding a 1-0 lead in the fifth, they loaded the bases with none out and still failed to score, and it was Chisholm — sandwiched between strikeouts by Jasson Dominguez and Anthony Volpe — who fouled out on a first-pitch changeup.
“We’ve got to be more consistent offensively, first and foremost,” manager Aaron Boone said. “That’s been the biggest thing that’s kind of ailed us through these few weeks.”
Afterward, when Chisholm — who is batting .224 with 14 homers and a .705 OPS — was asked to sum up his year, he was blunt in his assessment. “I’ve sucked all season,” he said. “The numbers speak for themselves.”
Chisholm has plenty of company in that respect, and that futility was on full display during the Yankees’ 8-2 loss in Sunday’s opener. Admittedly, drawing Yoshinobu Yamamoto was not an easy assignment, but the Yankees barely made the World Series MVP break a sweat as he breezed through a 102-pitch complete game, the first of his career in the regular season.
Yamamoto didn’t allow a hit until Trent Grisham’s leadoff homer into the second deck in rightfield in the fourth. The Yankees’ next hit didn’t come until Ben Rice opened the seventh with a double.
To recap, the Yankees totaled five runs in 27 innings against the back-to-back defending world champs, signaling that the pre-break ego boost generated by that trio of late-game comebacks against the Nationals officially has evaporated.
This Dodgers series in the Bronx was supposed to be a measuring stick, the chance for Boone & Co. to show they can be on the level of MLB’s gold standard without their injured stars. But in the first two games, the Yankees continued to show the same symptoms of their post-Judge offensive malaise without any apparent remedies.
As great as Yamamoto is, he shouldn’t be blowtorching through the Yankees as efficiently as he did Sunday. Not against a $360 million team with the AL’s second-best record.
Since June 20, however, the Yankees have been one of the worst offensive teams in the majors. Heading into Sunday, they averaged the fewest runs (3.35), posted the second-lowest OPS (.624) and were dead last in BB/K ratio (0.23).
When Judge is healthy, along with those rare stretches in which Giancarlo Stanton is upright, the Yankees boast MLB’s most lethal lineup. But that won’t be the case again for a while, and the current players in pinstripes are straining to pick up the slack.
“I don’t know if weight’s the right word,” said Ryan McMahon, who is hitting .216 with a .662 OPS. “I think we’re just a little off. We know we got the guys to get this going, so it’s just about doing it.”
Do they? The Yankees won 10 of their first 15 games without Judge, but in the past 25 games — not such a small sample size anymore; more like a disturbing trend — they are 9-16.
Other than Rice, who still shows MVP flashes amid his struggles, the meager expectations for the roster have dwindled to the point that their failures barely register. This has become the new normal.
In Game 1, the Dodgers did a masterful job of highlighting precisely what the Yankees have been lacking. They relentlessly drove up Cam Schlittler’s pitch count, and while he stacked eight strikeouts without a walk, that came at a price as the Dodgers worked him for exhausting at-bats.
Schlittler struck out the first four Dodgers he faced, but instead of that setting the tone, L.A. just got tougher from there, pushing his pitch count up to 71 (including 21 foul balls) through three innings. He threw 98 pitches in 4 1⁄3 innings.
“Strikeouts are good, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t put a competitive outing together,” said Schlittler, whose ERA crept up to 2.20. “They got a great team. They made me battle, had some good hits and chased me early.”
That fight, that plate tenacity, is what the Yankees appear to be missing lately. Boone described the Dodgers’ at-bats as “heavy,” a reference to how they wore Schlittler down, pushing deep counts, fouling off pitch after pitch.
In Game 2, the Yankees finally escaped with a victory — and some pride — thanks to Chisholm’s timely blast after pinch hitter Tommy Edman’s tying homer off Fernando Cruz in the top of the eighth.
“I just forgot about all the stuff that happened early in the game,” Chisholm said. “And just locked in on that one at-bat.”
If only it were really that easy for the Yankees going forward.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
