A Series Win, But Offense Remains a Problem

The Yankees won the series against the A’s, but it sure wasn’t an artistic success as their offense was awful in the first two games before a nice explosion on Sunday. Their lead over the Rays in the AL East is 1.5-games, while their opponent for the next four nights, the Jays, are just three games back. Lets get to it. 

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Is what happened Sunday afternoon enough to convince you that the Yankees have now broken out of their offensive doldrums just in time for a big four-game series up in Toronto? Not for me it isn’t, but as you all know I’m a bit of a pessimist.

Sure, they had a nice day scoring 12 runs against old friend Luis Severino and the awful A’s, but this is who they are, right? They have the ability to explode like this, yet earlier in the weekend they gave us two terrible games such as Friday (which they still won because they pitched great) and Saturday.

In the end they won the series, but let’s consider the opponent. By all rights, the Yankees should have swept this team but they didn’t because their offense is just so maddeningly inconsistent, especially when they get scoring opportunities and then fail to deliver timely hits with runners in scoring position.

Any player, manager, coach or GM will tell you the losses always stay with you longer than the wins, and I think that’s true for fans, too. I’m always more pissed about a loss than I am happy about a win. We watch these games and we expect to be entertained, and we also expect the Yankees to play well because they’re supposed to be one of the best teams in MLB, but they certainly haven’t been that lately.

Since June 7, the night they lost the second game of the first series against Boston, the Yankees have gone 9-12 and there are several losses in than stretch that have pushed us to the brink of insanity because for the most part, they have pitched well and their offense was simply inept. Get this: After the Red Sox pummeled them for 10 and 11 runs on back-to-back nights, over the past 19 games the Yankees have allowed five runs or more just five times, but they have also scored five runs or more just six times.

“We wont really push the panic button in here, maybe people on the outside do and that’s their job,” said Aaron Judge, who is now rivaling Derek Jeter as the most boring superstar interview in the sport. “We’re in first place. That’s what we’re concerned about. Nothing really shakes this team on the inside, or gets us off our game plan.”

Well, I would argue that there have been plenty of pitchers who have gotten the Yankees off their gameplan recently because the majority of the team has been slumping. Here’s a look at what has been happening the last 15 days:

• Judge: Before hitting two homers Sunday, he’d hit just three with four RBI in is previous 13 games and during that stretch he’s hitting .216. Since the last time his average was above .400 on May 21, he has dropped all the way to .356 which is still great, but it has been quite a fall and his struggles in key situations have made it feel even worse.

• Paul Goldschmidt: His hot start was always a bit unbelievable for me and now he’s in the midst of a 37-year-old crash back to reality. He broke an 0-for-20 on Sunday but he’s hitting .105 in his last 12 games with one RBI.

• Trent Grisham: The only reason he’s hit so often in the leadoff spot is because Boone has no one else to turn to. In his last 11 games he has a .353 on-base which is decent, but he also has just one homer since May 31.

• Giancarlo Stanton: Come on, did anyone really believe that he was going to provide a spark after missing more than two months? In the 10 games he has played he’s batting .235 and has no homers, one double and one RBI.

• Austin Wells: I’m continually underwhelmed because he is not the good-hitting catcher that he was long advertised to be in the minors. He’s now down to .214 for the season and has gone 13 games without a home run, and his penchant for making outs on first pitches has become a trend.

• DJ LeMahieu: Why are the Yankees even bothering with this fossil? Well, I’ll tell you why - Oswald Peraza, who is hitting .118 in his last seven games, is even worse at the plate. LeMahieu is shot, plain and simple. He’s hitting .206 in his last 13 games with two RBI, and he has no range at second base.

• Anthony Volpe: I don’t know if he’s ever going to become a reliable presence in the batting order. He’s hitting .114 in his last 14 games and is striking out 33% of the time with an OPS of .472. Oh, he’s also made nine errors so far.

Naturally, like Judge, Boone isn’t worried at all. He keeps telling us that this is a great offense, but it’s not. It’s an incredibly streaky offense, one that has built up some nice seasonal numbers thanks to 12 games with double-digit runs, all of which were victories, but those have been more than offset by 22 games in which they scored two or fewer, and their record of 4-18 in those games.

“You’re going to have little peaks and valleys here or there,” Boone said. “The last couple weeks have been a little tough for us.”

June 27: Yankees 3, A’s 0

➤ Will Warren might be the most surprising player on the team right now because I never expected him to be the pitcher he’s been this season. Sure, there have been some rocky moments, such as the first inning of this game, but overall he has helped cover the loss of Luis Gil better than I ever thought possible. This was the third time that he pitched at least five innings of shutout ball, and he had to dig deep to get there.

➤ Warren walked three men in the first inning, but he got out of that self-inflicted 36-pitch mess by also striking out the side including the last two when the bases were juiced. From there he gave up just two hits and another walk, but he only made it through the fifth because his pitch count was at 100 thanks mostly to that laborious first inning.

➤ Once he was out, the bullpen finished off the shutout and allowed just one hit with no walks over the final four innings as the A’s looked feeble.

➤ The Yankees’ offense did almost nothing, but in this game they didn’t need much and two of the only guys who have been going good lately produced big hits. Jazz Chisholm homered in the second and Cody Bellinger had a two-out RBI single in the third as he made the A’s pay for intentionally walking the slumping Judge with two outs. The other run came in the fourth when LeMahieu had a bases-loaded infield single in the fourth, the ball going off A’s starter Mitch Spence’s hand and no one could make a play on it. In that inning, the bases were loaded thanks to a catchers’ interference and two walks, and after the run scored, both Grisham and Judge whiffed, killing a bigger inning. In other words, it was pretty ugly.

What they said in Friday’s clubhouse

• Boone on Warren’s early struggles: “He’s probably two hitters away from being out of the game (in the first). He’s got the confidence and he’s got the stuff. He can get right out of that. He can get swing-and-miss in the strike zone, which he did.”

• Chisholm: “I feel like we could be better. I feel like we’re a better team than we’ve shown. We’ve definitely (had) some hiccups, and we definitely learned from it.”

• Boone on being in first place at the halfway point: “We put ourselves in a good position. It hasn’t been perfect. We’ve hit our bumps these last couple weeks. But overall, we’ve shown that we’re a team to be reckoned with but with a lot out there to improve on.”

June 28: A’s 7, Yankees 0

➤ I can’t imagine how pissed the people who paid to be in the ballpark were as they filed out after watching this disgraceful performance. The A’s began the day 18 games under .500, yet JP Sears - the ex-Yankee who had an 8.75 ERA over his previous eight starts - and reliever Jack Perkins combined on a three-hit shutout, all the hits being harmless singles. Judge and Wells each grounded into double plays and the Yankees went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.

➤ Clarke Schmidt blanked the A’s for the first three innings and extended his scoreless streak to 28.1 innings, the longest single-season streak by a Yankee since Allie Reynolds pitched 30 straight shutout innings in 1951. But once Brent Rooker ended it with a solo homer in the fourth, the fans should have just packed up their belongings and gotten on with their day because with their putrid offense, the Yankees never had a chance.

➤ For good measure, though, the A’s tacked on three more against Schmidt in the sixth when he issued back-to-back four-pitch walks before serving up a three-run homer to Nick Kurtz. And adding insult to injury, the A’s scored three in the eighth off overmatched Allan Winans, though Wells contributed with a bonehead play on a bunt that allowed the A’s to load the bases, and Bellinger made a bad throw to third after an RBI single by Austin Wynns that made one of the runs unearned.

What they said in Saturday’s clubhouse

• Boone: “In times like this, it comes down to getting a big hit with runners out there. We don’t have a lot of hits the last two days. We haven’t been hitting the long ball, either.”

• LeMahieu: “We’re going through it a little bit right now. I have all the confidence in the world we’ll turn it around. I saw it the first two months. It’s a long season … I know we’ll be fine.”

June 29: Yankees 12, A’s 5

➤ Raise your hand if you thought Marcus Stroman would get crushed inside two innings? Yeah, my arm is in the air because after compiling a 6.97 ERA in three Double-A rehab starts I fully expected that level of incompetence would continue in his first MLB start since April 11. Instead, he threw a stunningly efficient five innings giving up just one run on three hits and two walks. He threw 74 pitches and Boone wisely got him out after the fifth.

➤ The Yankees don’t have a No. 5 starter with Ryan Yarbrough out. Winans has clearly failed in his call-up, so Stroman has an opportunity as the Yankees continue to wait on the return of Gil. Now, do I think this is going to continue? No. Stroman was facing the A’s and they are not a good team. We’ll see where this goes as his next start probably lines up Friday in the Subway Series against the Mets who might be in a horrendous 3-13 death spiral right now, but they will almost certainly be tough on the Yankees.

➤ Chisholm provided quite a scare in the sixth when he struck out on a checked swing and looked like he suffered a hand injury and went right into the clubhouse. Fortunately he seems fine because he returned to finish the game and that’s a sigh of relief because he’s one of the few guys who has been hitting well during this hellish stretch.

➤ Chisholm was huge in this game with a solo homer to get things started in the second against Luis Severino - who by the way, absolutely sucks. And then Jazz hit the big three-run triple in the third and came home on a wild pitch, so he was directly involved in the first five runs. He also made a few really nice plays in the field and that was good to see because his play at third base since moving there has been spotty.

➤ It was also a big day for Bellinger as he had three hits and scored three runs, the big blow his three-run homer in the sixth that made it 10-1. And Judge finally showed a little life with two long home runs to left field which gives him 30 for the season. He became just the sixth player in franchise history with at least five consecutive 30-homer seasons joining Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Alex Rodriguez and Joe DiMaggio. And with his 44th career multi-homer game, he trails only Mantle (46) and Ruth (68).

➤ The Bellinger home run was made important thanks to JT Brubaker getting torched for four runs in the sixth inning that cut the Yankees lead to 10-5. He faced seven batters and got only one out, but Jonathan Loaisiga - back after missing a couple games with an illness - recorded two big outs to prevent the game from getting uncomfortably close. And then Tim Hill, Ian Hamilton and Luke Weaver combined for three hitless, scoreless innings to close it out.

➤ Volpe’s frustration over his complete offensive tank boiled over in the eighth when the struck out and then got ejected even though all he did was raise his arms in protest. Boone said Volpe told him he didn’t curse at umpire Steve Fairchild, but the thin-skinned ump tossed him anyway. It’s so beyond stupid with these umpires.

➤ JC Escarra returned to the team after a short paternity leave, but Ben Rice was the starting catcher and I think we’re going to be seeing that more. Rice has looked fine behind the plate, and if that continues, that’s how Boone can continue to play him now that he has lost the bulk of the DH bats to Stanton.

What they said in Sunday’s clubhouse

• Boone on Stroman: “I thought he was terrific. He gave us everything we needed. Really happy for him. I know it’s been a couple months and him wanting to really get back and contribute. That was an important outing for him, and that was an important outing for us.”

• Stroman: “I just feel like I’ve done a really good job putting my body and my mechanics in a better position. It’s been a process, but I feel good. I feel like this was a good building block to the next start. It’s not the same being on the side. You feel like you’re left out. Definitely good to be back with the boys.”

One of the more surprising teams in the AL is up next for the Yankees as they head north of the border to play four games in Toronto. The Blue Jays start the week just three games behind New York with a record of 45-38 and they won a series in Boston over the weekend.

As a team they rank third in MLB with a .256 average, but like the Yankees they’ve struggled to get big hits which is why they rank 15th in runs scored. On the mound, they have a 4.20 ERA which is 21st in MLB, while their WHIP is tied for 12th at 1.250.

Since getting swept by the Yankees in an April 27 doubleheader, the Jays have played nine games above .500 to get back into the race.

Here are some of the Blue Jays top players to watch:

➤ 1B Vladimir Guerrero: The noted Yankee killer is slashing .280/.384/.451 for an OPS of .831 and 41 RBI.

➤ RF George Springer: Another noted Yankee killer who is have a resurgent season with an .822 OPS, 12 homers and 40 RBI.

➤ C Alejandro Kirk: He’s been one of the best catchers in MLB and is hitting .315 with a .797 OPS.

➤ SS Bo Bichette: He leads the team with 49 RBI and has an OPS of .738.

➤ RP Jeff Hoffman: His ERA doesn’t look great at 4.98 but his WHIP is 1.080 and he does have 18 saves in 22 chances.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Monday, 7:07, YES: Carlos Rodon (2.92 ERA) vs. Max Scherzer (5.30) who signed with Toronto in the offseason but has made only two starts as he missed more than two months with an injury.

• Tuesday, 3:07, YES: Max Fried (1.92) vs. Kevin Gausman (4.21) who the Yankees tuned up for six runs in 2.2 innings back on April 27.

• Wednesday, 7:07, Amazon Prime: Will Warren (4.37) vs. Jose Berrios (3.26) who in his last two starts has not allowed an earned run un 14.2 innings in beating the White Sox and Red Sox.

• Thursday, 7:07, YES: Clarke Schmidt (3.07) vs. Chris Bassitt (4.29) who is considered the Jays’ ace and is tied with Berrios for the MLB lead with 17 starts.