Erik Boland: Yankees strike out another 17 times in loss to Rays
Tampa Bay Rays catcher Hunter Feduccia throws the ball around after the Yankees' Jose Caballero strikes out during the eighth inning on Tuesday in St. Petersburg, Fla. Credit: AP/Jason Behnken
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It was back to the bad old days Tuesday night for the Yankees.
The bad old days as in pretty much all that had been occurring with regularity the previous three weeks before Monday night’s victory over the Rays.
The Yankees regressed Tuesday night in a 6-4 loss to the Rays inside what has been a longtime house of horrors at Tropicana Field, but with an ignominious twist.
They stacked 17 strikeouts on top of the 17 they had the night before — the 34 strikeouts the most in a two-game stretch in franchise history.
“That’s a lot,” Cody Bellinger, who went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts and added a rare (for him) baserunning gaffe in the sixth inning, said by way of understatement. “I knew we had 17 yesterday, I didn’t feel like we had that many today, but obviously I’m wrong.”
The 5-1 win on Monday, on the surface, suggested that perhaps the Yankees had taken at least a small step toward emerging from their horrendous play of late, which dropped them, entering this series against the AL East-leading Rays, four games out of first place.
But looking beneath the surface Monday, it was really Cam Schlittler’s terrific eight-inning performance and a two-homer night from Jose Caballero — as well as a solo shot late by Ben Rice — that ultimately lathered up what continues to be the proverbial pig with lipstick.
The Yankees managed all of three hits Monday.
On Tuesday night, the Aaron Judge-less Yankees, again four games back after the loss, did manage 11 hits, their most in a game in what is now a 5-14 stretch dating to June 18.
The double-digit hits, no doubt, are the reason Bellinger didn’t “feel” like his team fanned as many times Tuesday as it did on Monday.
Aaron Boone, the Yankees’ pathologically optimistic manager, acknowledged the obvious.
Kind of.
“We’ve got to do a better job of putting the ball in play,” Boone said. “In a lot of ways, it was good to see [us] creating a little more opportunities for ourselves, getting a lot of hits. I thought offensively we were a little better than last night. But we’ve got to do a better job in some situations of getting the ball in play.”
That hasn’t happened with any degree of consistency in this 19-game stretch, one in which the Yankees, who have not scored more than five runs in any of those games, have struck out 201 times in 612 at-bats.
That’s the most strikeouts in the big leagues in that time.
“I mean, we don’t want to lead in that number, clearly,” Boone said. “But as far as approach, I’m confident in our approach, but we have to get some guys on track right now, some really good players, obviously, that are going through a tough time right now.
“We’re not going to overhaul and change, but part of our approach is being a tough out and being situational, and we’ve got to do a better job of that right now.”
No Yankee is going through a tougher time than first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. The 38-year-old, among the club’s top offensive performers the first two months of the season, has fallen off a cliff. Goldschmidt went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts Tuesday and is mired in an 0-for-30 nightmare.
“I wish I had an answer for you,” the always professional and accountable Goldschmidt said. “Obviously, the performance tonight, especially, was terrible. Really just a bad performance . . . There’s no excuses. I have not played well.”
Errors and unearned runs, an issue in too many games of this 19-game swan dive, did take a hiatus on Tuesday.
But starter Will Warren simply wasn’t good, allowing six runs and seven hits over four innings, sending his ERA to 4.15.
Rice was the lone bright spot for the offense on Tuesday. He showed early signs of climbing out of a three-week slump by collecting three hits, including his second home run in as many nights. However, after Rice’s three-run blast gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the third inning, Warren gave it back in the fourth.
The Rays erased their one-run deficit with four runs in the bottom of the fourth, the damaging blows back-to-back homers by Hunter Feduccia (two-run shot) and Yandy Diaz (solo HR) to make it 6-3.
“Sucks,” Warren said. “We all know what’s going on here right before the break. Cam pitched a hell of a game last night and I didn’t today. The bullpen held it down, we fought like hell there the last few innings and didn’t get it done. We’ll come back tomorrow and strap it up again.”
At the moment for Yankees fans, that may well sound more like a threat than anything.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
