Yankees' Bats Were Turned to Saw Dust by Royals' Seth Lugo

The Yankees offense took the night off and the result was an easy victory for the Royals at Yankee Stadium. Ugly in every sense of the word, and the scary part was that it looked like so many postseason losses from years past. Lets get to it.

Sept. 10: Royals 5, Yankees 0

This is exactly the game that everyone should be fearing come the postseason, because this was a classic example of a playoff team - which the Royals are going to be, and one the Yankees could easily be facing - trotting out one of their two or three very good starting pitchers in a series, and having them blow through the Yankees while barely breaking a sweat.

We’ve seen this scenario play out for how many postseason flameouts in a row? Well, I guess all the way back to 2009, the last time the Yankees won a World Series. How many seasons have the Yankees compiled impressive statistics in the regular season, making it seem to the outside world that their offense is dynamic, and then in October it’s like they’re swinging with toothpicks in their hands as they get bounced into the offseason.

Kansas City’s Seth Lugo entered Tuesday night’s game with a 3.05 ERA and a 1.113 WHIP, and it was not a fluke because he led all of MLB in innings pitched (186) and batters faced (755). No small sample size was this. And then he took the mound at Yankee Stadium and lowered his ERA and WHIP with seven dominant, ridiculously easy three-hit shutout innings and made the Yankees look foolish.

“The playoffs are a different animal,” said Gleyber Torres, who had two of the Yankees three hits. “If we face (Lugo) again, we for sure have to have a different plan.”

Here’s the sad part: Aaron Boone finally put out the lineup that most of us probably believe is the best one available to him and, assuming no one gets hurts, the lineup he’ll trot out for the playoffs and the result was one of the lamest offensive efforts of the season.

He has pretty much relegated Jose Trevino to once-a-week duty and has been going exclusively with Austin Wells as the catcher and cleanup hitter which, all I can say is, “It’s about time.” Jasson Dominguez, after toiling way too long in the minors, was at last in left field instead of Alex Verdugo. Torres has found a home in the leadoff spot and Anthony Volpe is where he belongs in the No. 9 spot. Anthony Rizzo is the default lesser of three evils at the black hole known as first base. And Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm and Giancarlo Stanton are all healthy and situated in the middle of the order.

And then they did this: At one point, Lugo retired 17 men in a row after Torres led off the game with a bloop single, and the Yankees never even advanced a man to second base. Two relievers covered the final two innings, 1-2-3 in each with four whiffs, meaning the Yankees struck out in 14 of their 30 plate appearances.

“That was probably as good a performance against us this year,” Boone said after watching Lugo strike out 10 and throw first-pitch strikes to 20 of the 24 batters he faced. “We were silent. Looked like he was really dotting location-wise with a big mix. … Got a lead, ahead in the count, not making a lot of mistakes, was off our barrel and had some swing-and-miss in there, too.”

How pathetic was it? It was the first game in Yankees history in which the lineup had zero walks, zero extra-base hits, and struck out at least 14 times. The first one ever! So hey, those of you who watched, you witnessed history.

It’s just further proof that when they put up 10 runs like they did Monday, that’s the outlier, the fluke occurrence, because in October, when they’re facing good teams with good pitchers, I’ll bet my life that they will be far closer to the team we saw Tuesday than the one we saw Monday.

Here are my observations:

➤ Marcus Stroman never had a chance in this game. It’s not that he was terrible - he was typically average, but he had no support so it didn’t really matter that he allowed only three runs on seven hits and two walks in 5.1 innings. It was his 20th start out of 28 where he allowed three runs or less. “Made a couple mistakes in situations with runners out there where they were able to pad the lead, but he got into the sixth inning with three runs. It was just with the way Lugo was going, seemed like a bigger lead,” Boone said.

➤ The Royals nicked him for the only two runs they needed in the third. Kyle Isbel singled and eventually scored on a Bobby Witt single, and Witt scored on a single by Salvador Perez who continued to torture the Yankees. Through two games he’s now 6-for-7 with five RBI. In the fifth, the last run against Stroman came when Isbel singled and scored on a Perez single.

➤ Mark Leiter relieved and guess what? Yeah, I knew you’d get it. He gave up a run because that’s what Leiter does just about every time he pitches. Tommy Pham took him deep in the seventh to make it 4-0. And then in the eighth, mop up man Tim Mayza yielded the final run.

➤ Soto and Judge went 0-for-8 with four strikeouts, and their ongoing combo slump is becoming a concern. Over the last 14 games, Judge is 10-for-51 with no home runs and four RBI, his longest home run drought since 2019. Soro while Soto is 11-for-52 with one homer and three RBI. If they hit like this in October, the Yankees will not win a series.

➤ Baltimore beat Boston 5-3 so the Yankees lead is back down to 1.5 games with 17 games remaining. “We aren’t paying attention to that,” Soto said of the division race, “We really focus on what we can do here. We’re trying to win games, and that’s all that matters. We don’t care what they do. They win or lose, good for them, but we focus on what we can do every day here.”

➤ I’m sorry, but that’s such a crock of bullshit and what amazes me is that professional athletes actually think we believe them when they say they aren’t paying attention to the white hot playoff chase. What do you mean you’re not paying attention to it? I hear it all the time in the Bills locker room, week after week, how they don’t look at the standings to see how the competition is doing. I don’t know why they lie about that, but I guess perhaps it’s the macho thing to do?