The Yankees Lose Another Series, This One to the Mediocre Reds

The Yankees continue on the path to irrelevancy as they dropped another game to the uninspiring Reds and thus have now gone six straight series without winning one. The offense is a travesty, and it wasted one of the few relatively good pitching performances the Yankees have managed in the past few weeks. Down in Box Score Briefs, the Orioles get back stud starter Dean Kremer, Rochester says goodbye to James Wood whom the Nationals called up, the Rays make a trade, and thoughts on the fast-rising Astros and Red Sox and the sinking Mariners. Lets get to it.

July 3: Reds 3, Yankees 2

Every year with the Yankees since 2010 when their current World Series drought began, I get to a point in the season where I hate them. Well, we have reached that point in 2024. Right now I hate this goddamn team.

This has been building for the past few weeks and honestly, the only reason I even watch these stupid games every night is because I write this newsletter for all of you. But I think I may need to get my head examined because I put probably 25 hours per week into this, and I do it for free because with my regular job, I’m not allowed to make money on a venture like this.

Seriously, even though we live in America, that’s actually a thing. My employer considers this newsletter as competition to the Gannett papers that cover the Yankees, so while I’m gainfully employed, I can’t make this a paid subscription newsletter and earn a little side income.

So I do it as a labor of love and I’ll continue doing it because nearly 1,300 of you seem to enjoy it and look forward to my daily rants. However, I’ll be honest with you, when the Yankees start playing as horribly as they have now for weeks, it really takes the fun out of doing this and makes getting up at the crack of dawn feel like a job.

Wednesday night was just the latest in a long line of disgraceful performances for this offense. Even Aaron Judge sucked with an 0-for-3 and a soul-crushing double play that killed the only legitimate chance the Yankees had of taking their first lead of the series.

The Yankees have now lost two games to the Cincinnati friggin’ Reds. They have now failed to win any of their last six series, losing five and splitting one. They have lost 13 of their last 18 games, and they are sinking like a stone behind the Orioles who, as I expected, are beginning to soar and pull away in the division.

I’ve told you this many times already, and I’ll say it yet again: The Yankees are the very epitome of average and once again they’re going nowhere this season. This is who they are, another deeply flawed team put together by Brian Cashman that will not end the World Series drought. The start was a lot of fun, but even when they were 45-19 it was clearly a mirage and as I always say, water finds its level.

Here are my observations:

➤ Carlos Rodon wasn’t terrible. That said, he gave up a two-run homer to a kid, Noelvi Marte, who is just coming off an 80-game PED suspension and was hitting .150 when he ripped a line drive to left in the second inning. And then in the fifth Rodon gave up a solo homer to Stuart Fairchild who was hitting .231 and looks like he’s a junior in high school. Three runs is too many when the offense is so pathetic.

➤ Rodon was immensely pissed when Aaron Boone came out to yank him with one out in the sixth after he walked Jeimer Candelario. Hey, I like the competitiveness, but here’s an idea: Pitch better and maybe Boone wouldn’t pull you at 95 pitches. As I said, he wasn’t terrible, and he was a million times better than his previous three starts when he allowed 20 earned runs in 13.2 innings, but it wasn’t good enough. “Some pitches I’d like to have back,” said Rodon, whose ERA rose to 4.45.

➤ The only positive that came out of this shit show was the bullpen throwing 3.2 scoreless and hitless innings as Michael Tonkin, Tommy Kahnle and Clay Holmes were great in a losing cause. How bad have things been for the Yankees? Holmes has not had a save opportunity since June 13, which he blew. He hasn’t recorded a save since June 9 and has been stuck on 19 for nearly a month. Think about that for a second.

➤ Boone somehow thought that just because the Reds were throwing a lefty, the apparently immortal Andrew Abbott, that it would be a good idea to sit lefty-swinging Ben Rice and play JD Davis at first and bat him cleanup. Rice has been the third-best hitter on the team since he was called up two weeks ago. Davis has one hit since he signed with the Yankees last week. If that wasn’t dumb enough, Jahmai Jones was the DH. So not only did Rice not start at first, he sat behind Jones. And we’re surprised the offense did nothing? “We got to make our own (luck), too,” Boone said. “Abbott pitched a heck of a game and kept us at bay.” For Christ’s sake, every guy the Yankees face lately keeps them at bay, and quite frankly, they don’t have to pitch all that well to do so.

➤ The funny thing is that while Davis was predictably useless, Jones actually fueled the only opportunity the Yankees had to score with a one-out double to left in the seventh that ended Abbott’s night. Austin Wells then drew a pinch-hit walk, and Anthony Volpe - still in the leadoff spot - broke an 0-for-18 slump with a two-run double to the gap in left-center. A wild pitch and a walk to Juan Soto set the stage for Judge, and he hit a rocket to third that became an easy double play. Sickening.

➤ Then in the ninth, Wells drew a terrific 10-pitch walk and Volpe immediately sucked the air out of the place with a double play grounder. That’s 83 double plays this year for the Yankees, most in MLB. By comparison, the Orioles have hit into a league-low 33. That’s hysterical. Soto then popped out to end another miserable night of baseball

➤ Soto has hit like shit lately. In his last 16 games he’s batting .200 with three homers and seven RBI, but because he walks so much (23 times in 73 plate appearances in this stretch) his on-base is .452. Look, it’s great that he gets on so often, but with only one other guy on the team hitting well, the Yankees need Soto to start hitting the ball and doing damage. I know I’ve complained about this before, but tell me I’m wrong. What good is Soto walking if no one else can drive him in?

➤ Here’s some not so shocking news: Judge was named AL player of the month for June, the second month in a row he has won that award. The only other Yankee to win player of the month in back-to-back months was Don Mattingly during his MVP season in 1985. It has happened only 21 times, accomplished by 19 different players, since monthly awards were first passed out in the 1970s. Interestingly, Bryce Harper of the Phillies was also named player of the month for both May and June.

➤ In more not so shocking news, Judge and Soto were also announced as starters in the outfield for the AL in the upcoming All-Star Game. Good for them, but I don’t care one iota about the All-Star Game.

⚾ The Orioles’ battered rotation got a boost Wednesday night with the return of Dean Kremer who had been on the IL since May 24 with a right triceps strain. Things did not go well for Kremer in his three minor league rehab starts for Triple-A Norfolk as he had an 11.42 ERA with nine strikeouts in 8 2/3 innings. However, he was excellent against the feeble and fading Mariners during a 4-1 victory.

Kremer pitched five scoreless innings allowing just two hits and two walks with eight strikeouts as the Orioles increased their lead over the Yankees to two games, and it sure feels like they’re about to go into overdrive and gradually pull away. The Yankees are officially demoted to the wild-card race and they’ll be there the rest of the season.

⚾ And guess which team the Yankees could potentially play if they make it to the postseason? The Astros. Yep, the arch nemesis Astros who started 12-24 and were given up for dead by every national baseball media person you could find. Houston is 19-9 since the start of June while the AL West leading Mariners - who are essentially the West Coast version of the Yankees with their lousy offense - have lost 10 of their last 13. They led the Astros by 10 games on June 18, and now that lead is down to two games.

Houston beat the Blue Jays 9-2 as Yordan Alvarez had a homer, two doubles and three RBI and as far as I’m concerned, it is almost a given that just like Baltimore caught and passed the Yankees, the Astros will catch and pass the Mariners and begin pulling away. Why does it feel like the Astros are never going to go away? Talk about playing a team at the right time, the Yankees played all seven of their games this year against Houston by May 9 and they won six of them because at the time they were playing great and the Astros looked like absolute horseshit. Man, the tables have really turned.

⚾ The Red Sox are coming to the Bronx this weekend and what once seemed like an impossibility is now very real. Boston could finish ahead of the Yankees in the AL East and the reason is pretty simple: Right now, they have a better team. The Red Sox are just five games behind the Yankees in the loss column after their 7-2 victory over the hapless Marlins. On June 14 they trailed the Yankees by 14 games and have since gained 7.5 games and they still have three games in hand in the standings.

⚾ It’s a bummer for us Rochester baseball fans that James Wood has been called up from the Red Wings to the Nationals, but that was always inevitable because the 6-foot-7 outfielder is Washington’s No. 1 prospect and he had been killing Triple-A. At the time of his callup Sunday night Wood was leading all of Triple-A with a 1.058 OPS even though he missed around three weeks with a hamstring injury. His slash line was .353/.463/.595 and despite playing only 52 games for the Red Wings he had 10 homers and 37 RBI.

Wood has now played three games for the Nationals and he has gone 3-for-10 and produced his first RBI Wednesday, a single that pushed across the go-ahead run as the Nationals beat the Mets 7-5. Wood joins shortstop CJ Abrams and starting pitcher Mackenzie Gore in Washington, all three of them part of the 2022 trade that sent Juan Soto to San Diego. The Nationals also got promising outfield prospect Robert Hassell III who’s still trying to find his way in Double-A, and pitcher Jarlin Susana who is at Single-A Fredericksburg averaging 13.15 strikeouts per nine innings with a 100 mph-plus fastball.

Soto had turned down a $440 million contract extension with Washington so GM Mike Rizzo made the right call in dealing him, and looking at the haul he got back, that trade might be what finally gets the Nationals back to contending for a playoff berth.

⚾ The Rays don’t usually make poor trades, but their acquisition of starting pitcher Aaron Civale from the Guardians at the 2023 deadline sure didn’t work out. Civale had a 5.17 ERA in 27 starts including going 2-6 with a 5.07 ERA this season. So the Rays cut bait and traded him Tuesday to the pitching-starved Brewers in exchange for infielder Gregory Barrios who was Milwaukee's No. 21 prospect.

Milwaukee has a comfortable seven-game lead in the NL Central over the Cardinals - the Reds, who have spent two nights beating the Yankees are 10.5 games back. The Brewers have already used 15 different pitchers to start games this season so they were desperate for help in the rotation so they’re rolling the dice on Civale who pitched to a 3.77 ERA in 76 starts for Cleveland from 2019-23.