David Lennon: Free-falling Yankees can't shake futility flu in 7th straight loss
From left: The Yankees' Oswaldo Cabrera, Anthony Volpe, Ben Rice and Jazz Chisholm Jr. look on during a sixth-inning pitching change against the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
What’s left to say about these free-falling Yankees?
Aaron Judge called them out for a “lack of focus” hours before his teammates took the field for Wednesday’s series finale against the Tigers. The ones that weren’t hooked up to IVs anyway, due to a stomach bug ravaging the clubhouse.
In a baseball sense, the Yankees have been sick for a while, coming down with the futility flu shortly after Judge vanished from the lineup. Of course his fractured rib was going to break the Yankees’ lineup, but no one expected this irreparable mess, and Wednesday’s 6-2 defeat to the Tigers, which stretched for 11 innings in 100-degree heat, made their seventh straight loss extra painful.
Cody Bellinger, the club’s early MVP turned black hole in the No. 3 spot, summed it up thusly: “It (expletive) sucks.”
There’s no other way to frame life in pinstripes lately. The Yankees entered Wednesday hitting .127 with a .400 OPS over their previous six games while averaging 2.5 runs. And if this team wasn’t already questioning its sanity after dropping the first two against the 49-loss Tigers, how they lost the third definitely put them over the edge.
After staring at a 2-0 deficit through eight innings, the Yankees rallied to tie it in the ninth with Amed Rosario’s one-out homer followed by Jazz Chisholm Jr. manufacturing the second run on an infield single, two stolen bases and a sprint home on a wild pitch. Typically, such an emotional comeback would vault a team to a desperately-needed victory.
But not for these Yankees. All it did was buy them a ticket to more malfunction. Fernando Cruz held the Tigers scoreless in the 10th, and Jose Caballero’s bunt got Spencer Jones to third base as the tying run with one out. But Oswaldo Cabrera whiffed, and after an intentional walk to Ben Rice, Ali Sanchez -- who was in Jasson Dominguez’s No. 2 spot due to Jones pinch-hitting for the helpless Wells in the eighth -- also struck out to kill the threat.
We’ll get to another high-leverage meltdown by Camilo Doval in a minute. But first it’s worth asking why Paul Goldschmidt wasn’t sent up to hit for Cabrera in that crucial ninth-inning spot. Watching the game, the thought was Goldschmidt had to be among the handful of ailing Yankees and presumably unavailable. But Boone said afterward that wasn’t the case. Yet, with one swing to win the game, the manager chose not to go with the former MVP, who also happens to be his hottest hitter, and instead sent up the guy who will be playing third base for the RailRiders in Scranton by Friday night.
Boone’s initial explanation had something to do with defensive positioning. Apparently his spare utility player, Max Schuemann, was too sick to even come to work, and the manager insisted he didn’t want to use Goldschmidt at second base or third. While that sounds logical, it also was the 10th inning with the score tied, meaning Goldschmidt could end the game right there. No need for a glove, right Aaron?
“Had confidence that Cabrera could touch the ball, too,” Boone said.
Goldschmidt vs. Cabrera doesn’t feel like much of a debate, unless Boone was thinking of squeeze-play potential. Earlier, Cabrera did execute a perfect bunt to move over a pair of runners in the eighth, which the Yankees of course stranded. Regardless, Cabrera struck out on five pitches, swinging wildly at a slider for strike three.
As part of a recurring theme, the Yankees also didn’t have their closer David Bednar, who’s away on paternity leave, which set off a chain of events that put Doval on the mound for the 11th. He got two outs, but after an intentional pass, Doval lost an 0-and-2 count in a walk to Hao-Yu Lee that loaded the bases. Doval then walked in the go-ahead run before teeing up a three-run single to Zach McKinstry. Not all that surprising, as lefty hitters were slashing .350/.391/.550 vs. Doval before that at-bat.
Winning has rarely looked this hard for the Yankees. But with these makeshift lineups, shoddy defense and a disturbing knack for the pivotal mistake, it’s not difficult to figure out why this keeps happening.
But here’s the harsh reality: Judge won’t be back until late August, at the earliest, so the Yankees need to figure things out. The sidelined captain mentioned Wednesday that he already had talked to a number of players about the current malaise and planned to have a bigger team-wide meeting at some point.
“We just gotta dial it in,” Judge said Wednesday morning. “We’re here to win a World Series. That’s your motivation every single day you step on that field. No matter what happens, I got a job to do.”
Forget October. The Yankees currently are in survival mode, trying to get to the All-Star break with their pride intact and the Rays still in sight. With Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon expected back Friday, that should help. Also, the Twins are showing up this weekend, and if the Yankees can’t get right against their favorite AL Central patsies, they’ve got even bigger problems than we’ve imagined.
“I just feel like we all got to look each other in the face and hold each other accountable,” Chisholm said. “That’s how we always are normally, and I feel like we’ve been losing it a little bit.”
Along with a lot of games, in a downward spiral that gets more demoralizing by the day.
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.
