The Yankees offense continues to sink to new and embarrassing lows

To all the fathers out there, I hope you didn’t waste part of your Father’s Day watching Sunday’s deplorable doubleheader sweep in which the Yankees could not have been more feeble. This team is in trouble, and it’s hard to see a path forward with an offense has terrible as this one. If you can, enjoy the newsletter today. Some day I’ll have something nice to say about them.

Folks, I’m trying my best here to not be so negative every time I write to you, but it’s just not possible. And quite frankly, you’re all passionate fans which is probably why you’re subscribing to this, and I think you’d be disappointed in me if I tried to put lipstick on this pig.

You’d call me out if I acted like Aaron Boone and replicated his “everyone gets a participation trophy for trying hard” schtick and spent paragraph upon paragraph trying to spin every negative into a positive. You know I won’t do that, so here it is:

These Yankees stink. Top to bottom, they just flat out stink and if you didn’t believe it before this weekend, how does a sweep at the hands of the god damn mediocre-as-can-be Boston Red Sox taste? That makes five losses in six tries against that team, and overall, the Yankees have now lost four straight games and 8 of their last 11.

“It sucks. It’s definitely a low in the season,” Anthony Rizzo said of the sweep.

With a record of 39-33, they are now 10.5 games behind the Rays, 5.5 behind the second-place Orioles, and are just two games in front of the last-place Red Sox in the AL East.

I’ve run out of ways to describe how putrid this offense is. It’s almost incomprehensible how terrible the Yankees are in the art of hitting. I watch these games and I can’t put into context what I’m seeing. Can you imagine being as bad at your job as some of these guys are, and still be collecting a paycheck? What a world.

But I, of course, knew this was going to happen. I’m going to remind you of something I wrote before the season, and it is absolutely coming true. I told you the Yankees weren’t going anywhere this year because they did almost nothing to change the makeup of an offense that was fatally flawed and has been for several years.

It’s the same shitty team that’s now a year older, doing the same shitty things. A team only Brian Cashman and Boone still foolishly believe in.

Between losing both games of Sunday’s doubleheader, Boone once again tried to shovel it down our throats that even without Judge, these Yankees can still get it done, despite all the proof to the contrary.

“That’s the storyline, so we’re going to get beat over the head with that,” Boone said of the constant reference to not having Judge and how much that hurts the offense. “The reality is that team we’re rolling out there is capable of doing damage offensively. You take the best player in the world out, that, to me, is just an excuse right now. We got plenty of guys capable of putting up big runs. I know it’s going to be the story every day until we start banging away. But we got more than capable people to get it done. We just gotta get a little more consistent right now.”

Who is he talking about? Rizzo? Giancarlo Stanton? Josh Donaldson? DJ LeMahieu? Jose Trevino? Kyle Higashioka? What do those guys have in common besides their truly abysmal numbers? Yeah, they’re all 30 years old or over, some way over. Is he talking about helpless Anthony Volpe, Oswaldo Cabrera, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Willie Calhoun? Does he think Harrison Bader will come back and provide a jolt for the two weeks he’ll probably be healthy before going on the injured list for something else?

Are Jake Bauers, Gleyber Torres, and Billy McKinney, the only guys who even had a pulse in this series, going to lead the way?

Right now, with the way this team is hitting, you can bring 2022 Judge into the lineup and he wouldn’t make much of a difference. He only gets to bat four or five times a game; the rest of these stiffs have to cover the other 30 or so at bats.

“There’s 30 teams in baseball right now that don’t have Aaron Judge on it,” Rizzo said. “He’s our captain, he’s our leader. It sucks, but one guy doesn’t make the biggest difference in the world. For us as a unit, we gotta come together and rally for us, for him, for everyone.”

➤ Judge received another injection into his toe Thursday because it was still bothering him almost two weeks since the incident and this further convinces me he’s probably not playing for at least several more weeks. In any other park in MLB, Judge makes that catch and he’s fine, but at Dodger Stadium, there’s a god damn slab of concrete right where his foot hit, and this is the result. Go ahead, try to make the argument to me that the Yankees aren’t injury cursed.

➤ Bader asked if he could continue his rehab assignment at Double-A so he missed the entire series. This really bugged me. To me, if you’re gonna play there, why not just come play for the Yankees, especially in a time of dire need? Clearly he’s well enough to play, and he’d already been in a couple games down there. Bader even said on June 9 that he didn’t want to spend much time in the minors, nor did he think he would need to. “I’m not helping anybody if I’m on a rehab assignment,” he said. Yet, here we are. Now Boone said Tuesday is the targeted return.

➤ I hope the Yankees never, ever, ever, wear anything put pinstripes at home and gray on the road, and that they never succumb to the stupidity of alternate jerseys like the Red Sox and so many other teams have. Those yellow garbage bag uniforms the Red Sox wore Sunday would look fine on a beer league softball team, not on a major league team.

Here are my observations on the three games against the Red Sox.

June 16: Red Sox 15, Yankees 5

➤ Hey, at least the Yankees gave us the courtesy of embarrassing themselves in the first three innings which freed up the rest of our nights, right? God bless you if you watched a single pitch after Justin Turner’s grand slam made it 10-1 in the third inning. As part of my duty to you, I watched the condensed game Saturday morning so I could make all my points, but yeah, you should have comfortably moved on to Netflix or something by around 8 p.m.

➤ Domingo German has been very good almost the entire season, but he had a shit night. That happens, especially from a guy who went into the season - before pitchers started dropping in spring training like characters in Game of Thrones - competing for the No. 5 spot in the rotation. German gave up seven runs on seven hits and two walks to the 15 batters he faced. Matt Krook came in for his major league debut and after getting two men out, he should have been out of the inning when Pablo Reyes hit a weak grounder to the utterly useless Donaldson at third. Rather than ending the inning, Donaldson bobbled it, everyone was safe and a run scored. And then Krook gave up a single and Turner’s grand slam, so five runs that should have never scored. In the fourth Krook was pulled after putting two men on, and both scored off Albert Abreu thanks to two singles and a throwing error by Bauers from right field.

➤ Torres had another brutal, lazy, brain dead error that gifted the Red Sox their 14th run, and Rizzo made an awful play when he ranged way too far to his right to field a grounder and no play could be made because Krook didn’t cover first. Though I have to say, he probably didn’t think he needed to cover because the play should have been a routine 4-3 putout if Rizzo hadn’t gone so crazily far out of position. It was just a bizarre night of gaffes and horrible pitching. And while the Yankees scored five runs on 10 hits, a veritable offensive explosion for them, I’m not giving them much credit for that. Four of those runs came after they fell behind 13-1 and the Red Sox rolled out their scrub relievers after starter Tanner Houck was knocked out of the game when he took a Higashioka liner off his face in the fifth.

➤ I love how Rizzo finally did something at the plate, right when it mattered most. Down 13-1, he hit a two-run double. Gee, thanks. And Donaldson hit a home run that made it 14-5. Again, thanks for that clutch piece of hitting.

➤ How about this: The Red Sox pounded out 17 hits, and every player in the lineup had at least one except Yankees mass murderer Rafael Devers who went 0-for-4. Turner had three hits plus six RBI, and Masataka Yoshida had four hits and three RBI. The Red Sox were 10-for-18 with runners in scoring position.

BOX SCORE

June 18 (Game 1): Red Sox 6, Yankees 2

➤ The Yankees came into the opener of the doubleheader batting an MLB-worst .205 since June 4, their first game without Judge. Their .625 OPS in that span was ahead of only the last-place Royals (.610). That’s the company they’ve been keeping, and nothing changed Sunday with another pair of egregiously bad performances. I hope none of their fathers were watching this day-long disgrace.

➤ In the opener, Bauers doubled and Torres hit a two-run homer in the first inning and then over the final eight innings, the Yankees tacked on two more hits - a double by Bauers and a single by Rizzo against the uninspiring foursome of Kaleb Ort, Chris Murphy, Nick Pivetta and Chris Martin. That was the offense. Laughable.

➤ Clarke Schmidt pitched well for four innings, and then as he is known to do, he got to the third time through the order in the fifth and the 2-0 lead the Yankees had was gone in a flash. He got the No. 9 hitter out, and then walked Alex Verdugo, gave up a double to Turner, an RBI groundout to Devers, and an RBI single to Adam Duvall.

➤ Michael King relieved, got the last out in the fifth, and then stunk the joint out in the sixth. He got the first two outs pretty easily but then the walls caved in. Literally. That god damn Green Monster killed him. The collapse started with a slow roller to third that Kike Hernandez beat out. Then Connor Wong doubled off the wall for a run, Verdugo doubled off the wall for another run, and Turner singled to make it 5-2. King threw 36 pitches in his disastrous outing and got only one swing and miss. His velocity was down, his command was awful, and the Red Sox made him pay. In his last four games King has a 9.53 ERA after it was 1.65 in his first 19 games.

➤ Nick Ramirez came in for the seventh and his contribution was allowing a leadoff triple to Yoshida and a balk which sent him home to make it 6-2.

BOX SCORE

June 18 (Game 2): Red Sox 4, Yankees 1

➤ The best part of this game is it took only two hours, 20 minutes. This time, the vaunted offense produced one run on five hits and went 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. For the day, the Yankees were 1-for-16 with RISP, and during the four-game losing streak that began with the blown game against the Mets they are 5-for-39.

➤ Luis Severino wasn’t awful, so I guess that’s a step up for him lately. His velocity was better and he didn’t put the Yankees into an impossible early hole. Then again, the hole was still deep enough to where this team couldn’t escape. He gave up a run in the second as Devers singled and scored on a double by Hernandez. In the fourth, two singles and a walk loaded the bases and then a catchers’ interference on a Higashioka on a swing by Reese McGuire forced in a run. So on this day, the Yankees gave up runs on a balk and a catchers’ interference which is quite a thing. Finally in the fifth, the dagger as Severino gave up a two-out, two-run double to Triston Casas, a guy hitting a very Yankee-like .210. Down three runs, the game was over.

➤ As they did in the first game, the Yankees grabbed a quick lead thanks to the only two guys who did anything. Bauers walked, Torres doubled, and then Rizzo plated Bauers, not with a hit of course but with a groundout. That was the Yankee offense. Across the two games, Bauers and Torres were a combined 6-for-15; the rest of the team was 3-for-48.

➤ As they did last week, the Yankees made Red Sox starter Brayan Bello look like a star. He gave up one run on four hits and three walks with eight strikeouts. This was the 19th time this season a starter has gone at least seven innings against the Yankees, the most in MLB. What does that say exactly? It says the Yankee offense is so bad that even in this era when a starter rarely goes six innings, 19 have gone at least seven because their lineup is so easy to get through. On the flip side, Yankees starters have gone at least seven innings just four times. Only the A’s (3) and Rockies (2) have fewer.

➤ Stanton started the weekend slashing .351/.416/.631 with 17 runs, 8 doubles, 1 triple, 7 homers and 24 RBI in 29 career games at Fenway. Those numbers will drop. In the three games he was 1-for-12 with six strikeouts. He’s now hitting .204 with a .708 OPS and since coming off the IL he’s 5-for-44. Donaldson is now 8-for-53 for the season which is a .151 average. LeMahieu is down to .232, Volpe is at .189, Trevino is .218, Rizzo is .262, Torres is .256, Cabrera is .190 and Higashioka is .236. Is it any wonder why they got swept by the Red Sox?

BOX SCORE

 ➤ June 19, 1942: Today, we don’t even blink when a player strikes out three times in a game. Hell, four strikeouts in a game doesn’t even warrant a raising of the eyebrows because strikeouts are so prevalent in the 21st century.

But back in Joe DiMaggio’s day, a hitter was embarrassed when he struck out and it was a source of pride for them to make sure if they were making an out, it wasn’t going to be a whiff. So you can imagine how mortified DiMaggio was on this night at Cleveland Stadium when Indians pitcher Mel Harder struck him out three times during a 5-4 Yankees loss. It was the only time in DiMaggio’s 1,787-game career where he had a hat trick of strikeouts.

➤ June 19, 2015: After been suspended for the entire 2014 season, Alex Rodriguez’s bid to reach 3,000 hits was delayed, but on this day he finally became the 29th major leaguer to reach that plateau when he hit a first-inning solo home run off Detroit ace Justin Verlander which started a 7-2 Yankees victory in the Bronx.

A-Rod did what Derek Jeter had done four years earlier - homering at Yankee Stadium for the milestone hit. The only other player to homer for his 3,000th hit was another former Yankee, Wade Boggs, though he did it as a member of the Rays on Aug. 7, 1999.

“A year ago today, I didn’t know if this day would ever come,” A-Rod said. “There were some really dark days.” Yes, of his own doing.

After yet another day off Monday, the Yankees go home to play three against the Mariners who they took two of three from last month in Seattle.

The Mariners continue to scuffle along and have gone 5-8 in June which has pushed them 8.5 games behind the AL West-leading Rangers. In the wild card race, the Mariners are buried in seventh place and as you know, only three wild cards qualify. However, they’re only four games out of that third spot so it’s not a dire situation.

The Mariners just haven’t hit very well as they rank 24th in MLB in OPS at .692, their .229 average is 26th, and their .310 on-base is 23rd. Star center fielder Julio Rodriguez still hasn’t broken out of a season-long funk with a .244 average and .300 on-base. He does have 12 homers, 39 RBI and 15 stolen bases, but his production is well off the great rookie season he had in 2022.

First baseman Ty France has been the most consistent hitter at .281/.328/.427 with an OPS of .769, and former Blue Jay Teoscar Hernandez has 12 homers and 39 RBI.

On the pitching side the Mariners have been pretty solid as they rank 11th in ERA at 3.92 and fourth in WHIP at 1.21. The Yankees were fortunate they missed Luis Castillo in Seattle, but that won’t be the case this time. The pitching matchups are as follows:

Tuesday, 7:05 p.m. on YES it’s Gerrit Cole (2.75 ERA) against George Kirby (3.24); Wednesday at 7:05 on Amazon Prime it’s a Scranton call up, possibly Randy Vazquez or Jhony Brito, against Castillo (2.73); and Thursday, 7:05 on YES it’s German (4.30) against Bryan Woo (7.30).