Time Has Come to Bring Up Prospects And Give Them a Look

Eight straight losses. That’s hard to do these days in MLB, but the Yankees have achieved it, their longest losing streak since 1995. Swept by the Red Sox, meaning they are now 1-8 this season against the AL East’s fourth-place team. The season cannot end fast enough. But as always, I will continue to plug away for you loyal subscribers.

There is only one meaningful thing left to do this year for the Yankees: Bring up a few of the near-ready prospects right now and let them have some meaningful big league playing time over the final six weeks of this miserable, lost season. Don’t wait until Sept. 1 when the roster can expand to 28; do it Monday morning.

At the very least, a fan base that continues to show up at Yankee Stadium 40,000 strong deserves to watch players who aren’t walking dead around the diamond in favor of young, energetic players who will care so much more on a daily basis as they try to make their cases for the 2024 roster.

Seriously, why the hell are we watching career nobodies like Billy McKinney, Jake Bauers, Kyle Higashioka, Oswaldo Cabrera, and Greg Allen day after day? Not to mention over-the-hill and vastly overpaid former standouts Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu who look completely shot.

All you have to do is look back to 2016, the last time the Yankees missed the postseason, when they knew their season was cooked in August and up from the minors came Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge, Tyler Austin and Luis Severino. It gave fans something to be interested in, but way more important than that, it paid big dividends in 2017 when Sanchez, Judge and Severino played major roles in the Yankees taking the Astros to Game 7 in the ALCS.

The Yankees are in desperate need of change. This roster, as I’ve said almost all season, is washed. There is so much dead weight that Superman himself would struggle to lift it over his head. Get some of these kids up and basically begin spring training six months early. Get something out of these last six weeks as opposed to evaluating these kids against fellow kids in low-wattage spring training games.

Aaron Boone, who hopefully won’t be in Tampa in February, said that he has met with Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman about the possibility of tapping into Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take a look and Boone said, “I think anything’s on the table right now. Obviously, guys from down below are pushing to get involved. Considerations. Those kinds of things. Just talking everything about our team.”

First up, 23-year-old infielder Oswald Peraza. Bring him up, keep him up, play him at third base every day, and send Cabrera back to Scranton and leave him there.

Next, 22-year-old center fielder Everson Periera, the No. 3-rated prospect in the system who across Double-A Somerset and Triple-A S/WB this year is hitting .302 with 18 homers, 64 RBI and a .937 OPS. One of his homers on Saturday traveled 476 feet so yeah, the Yankees must love that - exit velo baby! Put him in left field and send McKinney to S/WB or packing.

After that, let’s see 24-year-old catcher Austin Wells because the Yankees thought enough of him to pick him in the 2018 draft, and when he decided to go to college, they picked him again in 2020, that time in the first round. Sunday he hit two homers and had seven RBI. So get him up, send down Ben Rortvedt who has done nothing, and put Higgy back into the start-twice-a-week role.

And with Carlos Rodon due back Tuesday, move Severino to the bullpen, keep Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito in the rotation and give them regular turns to see if they can handle it, rather than have them riding the Scranton shuttle.

There is nothing left for this team to play for except the future, so let’s set that in motion.

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

Aug. 18: Red Sox 8, Yankees 3

➤ I’ll give the Yankees credit for one thing lately: They decide how we’re going to spend our evenings pretty quickly. Take the opener Friday night. I planned on watching the entire game, but 13 Red Sox batters in it was 7-0 and I was done with this fiasco by about 7:45. My wife and I watched streaming episodes of shows we’re involved in right now.

➤ Brito continued his pattern of either being very good or very bad. Six earned runs on nine hits should clarify which one he was and now his ERA is a robust 5.43. The top of the Sox order killed him. In the first inning, the first four batters were Alex Verdugo (single), Rafael Devers (single), Justin Turner (RBI single), and Masataka Yoshida (three-run homer). That was the ballgame right there, but I hung in for the second inning. That horror show was highlighted by another Gleyber Torres brain fart in the field, followed by consecutive singles by Verdugo, Devers, Turner and Yoshida that made it 7-0. Laughable. The top four batters went 8-for-8 against Brito and that’s when I checked out for the night. Hope you did, too.

➤ Applause for Ian Hamilton who came in and shut the Sox down for 3.2 innings on one hit with five strikeouts. In a season filled with irritation, Hamilton has been a very nice story with a 1.72 ERA.

➤ Hey, Aaron Judge did something. Of course it was way too late and meaningless, but his two-run homer in the eighth was his first at Yankee Stadium since before his injury in early June.

➤ Watching the highlights of the game, I did get a chuckle out of the “Fire Cashman!” chants that sprang up. Wasted energy because Cashman is not getting fired.

➤ Now the Yankees have their young players joining in on the delusional train. “We know we haven’t played near our potential the entire year,” said Anthony Volpe. “So the fact that we still trust and believe in each other and know that we’ve got another gear to get to; every day just working to try and do that.” What potential? What other gear do the Yankees have?

BOX SCORE

Aug. 19: Red Sox 8, Yankees 1

➤ Once again, you could have turned the TV off a half hour after the game started because that’s all you needed to see. I labored on because I was on my deck on an otherwise beautiful day, doing some other writing work and had the game on my iPad so I watched the entire miserable mess.

➤ Gerrit Cole didn’t have it, and that’s been rare this season. What was so unbelievable is that whereas Brito couldn’t get anyone in the top of the order out, what killed Cole was that he allowed the Red Sox No. 8 and 9 hitters to kill him. That was just so on brand for this Yankees season to have something that ridiculous happen.

➤ Yeah, Devers had two hits off him, but that happens every time Cole faces Devers because Devers owns him. But it was two stiffs at the bottom of the order who drove in all six runs Cole gave up in his four innings of work. In the decisive second inning, the Red Sox loaded the bases with no outs, Cole got a force at home, but then up came Luis Urias who had two homers and was batting .180. He crushed a grand slam to left-center and at 4-0 it was game over because as we all know, there’s no way the Yankees can come back from four runs down anymore.

➤ In the fourth, Pablo Reyes, who had drawn a really tough walk in the second to set that inning up, singled to lead off and then Connor Wong hit a two-run homer to right for a 6-0 lead. Cole said he didn’t even feel like he was making bad pitches. True, the Red Sox fouled off some good pitches, and the home plate ump was squeezing him, but close as they were, most of the balls were indeed balls. “I don't recall experiencing anything like this before in my career,” Cole said of the Yankees inept play and seven-game losing streak. Well, that’s probably not true because he pitched for some not-so-good Pirates teams in 2016 and 2017, but the point is well taken: Those were the Pirates, these are the Yankees.

➤ As usual, the Yankees offense was horrid. They had no hits through five innings against Kutter Crawford for Christ’s sake. Finally, Judge hit another meaningless solo homer to break that up in the sixth, but nothing from that point on. They finished with two hits (Allen had an infield single) and two walks.

➤ How pathetic is this offense? In the second inning, down 4-0, Stanton drew a walk, which was better than his other three at bats where he looked like a Little Leaguer striking out each time. Isiah Kiner-Falefa then tried to bunt for a hit but he popped it up to the catcher Wong who easily doubled Stanton off at first. Boone said after the game it was the right play by IKF trying to get something going because it wasn’t a sacrifice. OK, I can see that I guess, at least until the reason why Boone considered it smart. Apparently, the Yankees scouting report said Crawford has had issues throwing to bases, so the hope here was that IKF would bunt to the pitcher, and that he would throw it away to spark a rally. I mean, can you even believe we’re at this point when that’s the strategy?

BOX SCORE

Aug. 20: Red Sox 6, Yankees 5

➤ Man, even in a game that none of us should have even cared about at this point, this was one gut punch of a loss. The Yankees actually showed a little heart and a little fight as they battled back three times to tie it, and still, multiple failures at the plate, on the mound, in the field and on the bases cost them yet another game.

➤ The Red Sox were absolutely blessed in this game as everything that could have gone their way did. Top of the first, Clarke Schmidt - who pitched very well - got ahead of Devers 0-2 and then threw strike three, but the umpire called it a ball. Three pitches later, Devers hit an upper-deck homer to right when his ass should have been back on the bench. In the fourth, Torres led off with a shot to right-center that missed going over the fence by about two feet, and of course, those two feet meant everything because Torres never moved from second as Bauers, IKF and Harrison Bader all failed.

➤ Fast forward to the eighth in a 5-5 game. With IKF in motion from first, Volpe singled to left and when Rob Refsnyder slipped, IKF tried to score and he did. I had no doubt that he was safe and I have no idea how replay overturned the original safe call. But the Red Sox got the call, so it stayed tied. And then in the ninth, after Clay Holmes blew another game by allowing a run on a Turner single, Allen hit a ball that missed going out by inches, and once again, with men on first and second and no outs, the Yankees couldn’t score, Judge contributing an awful three-pitch whiff. Just brutal.

➤ Torres made a sloppy feed on what should have been a double play grounder in the sixth, and then a rushed and contorted Volpe made a throwing error that allowed a run to score for a 2-1 Boston lead. But Torres made amends with a solo homer in the bottom of the sixth. Torres is such a rollercoaster ride, almost from inning to inning.

➤ In the seventh, Michael King just barfed all over himself. He walked Reese McGuire which was ridiculous. And with two outs, he intentionally walked Devers which was absolutely the right call by Boone. Devers had nine hits in the month of August before showing up in the Bronx this weekend and had nine in this series. The guy is pure evil, the No. 1 active Yankee killer. So yeah, walk him. But then Turner came up and launched King’s first pitch a mile for a three-run homer. I mean King could not have served it up any better, a cement mixer right in the heart of the plate. But here again, the Yankees shockingly got off the deck as Volpe hit a three-run homer to tie it, though it went for naught.

➤ So, how was this for a week? The last time the Yankees had a lead in a game was the top of the second inning last Monday when they were up 2-1 in Atlanta. By the end of that inning they were down 4-2 and they never led over the final two-plus games in Atlanta and three against the Red Sox, a total of 52 innings.

➤ This sweep by the Red Sox gave the Yankees a 1-8 record against their long-time rival, during which they’ve been outscored 54-24. “They’ve kicked our asses,” Boone said of the Red Sox. “We’ve played a handful of competitive games (against them) that have come down to the end where they’ve taken us. We just haven’t been good enough.”

BOX SCORE

 ➤ Aug. 21, 2006: Back in 1978, as the Yankees were chasing down the Red Sox in what became one of the greatest collapses in baseball history - Boston blowing a 14-game AL East lead - there was a series at Fenway Park in September that became known as the Boston Massacre. The Yankees swept all four games which pulled them even in the division, and ultimately, they beat the Red Sox in the infamous Bucky Dent game.

Seventeen years ago on this day, the Yankees went one better. They completed a five-game sweep at Fenway which immediately became known as the Boston Massacre II. By pulling off this extreme rarity - it was the Yanks’ first five-game sweep of Boston since 1951 and first at Fenway Park since 1943 - the Yankees’ division lead grew from 1.5 to 6.5 games and the Red Sox were toast. They eventually finished third in the division, 11 games behind and missed the postseason.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t remind me of ‘78,” Yankees pitching coach Ron Guidry said. “Reggie’s here, (head trainer Gene) Monahan’s here and I think we’re the only ones who were there. The other one was a little different in that we were four out and we had to play that well.”

The series began with a Friday doubleheader, created by an earlier rainout, and the Yankees swept that 12-4 and 14-11. The Yankees then won 13-5 on Saturday, 8-5 on Sunday, and closed it out with a tight 2-1 victory on Monday. Add that up and the final count is 49-26. Yes, a massacre.

“These are probably the five greatest games I’ve been involved in,” Jason Giambi said. “Forget about the race. Just the quality of the baseball we played? Unbelievable.”

In the last game, Cory Lidle, who had just been acquired from the Phillies at the trade deadline, pitched six scoreless innings to outduel former Yankee, 43-year-old David Wells. And Bobby Abreu, who also came from Philadelphia in the Lidle trade, delivered an RBI double in the sixth to break a scoreless duel.

Unlike recent Yankees trade deadline acquisitions, Abreu paid immediate dividends. He finished his first Yankees-Red Sox series 10-for-20 with four doubles, three RBI and seven walks. “I told him we couldn’t be happier to have him here,” Joe Torre said. “He just has slipped into this lineup and this clubhouse as easily as anybody.”

After a day off Monday, the 60-64 Yankees will host the 57-68 Nationals for three games at the stadium. I’d say this might be a team the Yankees can actually handle, but that may not be true. Since the All-Star break, the Nationals - who have almost no one on their roster that you’ve even heard of unless you live in Rochester and closely follow the Red Wings who are Washington’s Triple-A team - are 21-14. The Yankees are 11-22.

Washington’s best player, outfielder Lane Thomas, was a rumored Yankees target at the trade deadline but no deal was made. Too bad because the 27-year-old has 20 homers, 69 RBI, is slashing .289/.335/.480 with an .815 OPS and can’t become a free agent until after 2026. He could have been the left field solution.

Otherwise, first baseman/DH Joey Meneses is batting .285 with 69 RBI and outfielder Stone Garrett has an .815 OPS. So a couple nice players, and they have helped the Nationals hit .260 as a team, which ranks a somewhat shocking fifth in MLB.

The pitching matchups look like this: Tuesday at 7:05 on YES it’s Rodon (7.33) against Josiah Gray (3.96); Wednesday at 7:05 on YES it’s Severino (7.98) against MacKenzie Gore (4.38); and Thursday at 1:05 it’s TBD for the Yankees against Patrick Corbin (4.71).