Yankees Do What They Do and Lose Another Series to a Losing Team

The Yankees were terrible and they dropped a series to a Rangers team that improved its record to 67-73. Thus, since the start of August, this was the fifth series the Yankees have lost to a team that was under .500 at the time the series began. Nice work. Incredibly, the Orioles lost to the White Sox so the Yankees remained just a half-game out of first place in the AL East, a division that neither New York or Baltimore seems interested in winning. Lets get to it.

Sept. 4: Rangers 10, Yankees 6

There was no need to bring in Clay Holmes to dump gasoline onto a raging forest fire Wednesday because the rest of the Yankees came armed with their own gas cans and gave him a night off.

Don’t be fooled by that score. The Yankees got their asses kicked in Texas and this game was nowhere near as close as 10-6 might indicate. It was a 10-2 debacle until the ninth inning when the Yankees put together one of their patented Aaron Boone “we never quit” fake rallies, one that did nothing more than add about 20 minutes to the time of the game and simply delayed the inevitability of another defeat and another series loss.

And of course, Boone made mention of that afterward. “Love the fact that nobody mails it in,” he said. “Keep playing until the end. I appreciate that about this group.”

Yep, nothing like showing guts and courage and the will to win when you’re down 10-2 in the ninth inning and put up four meaningless runs to pad your stats. But when the game was still a game (for a little while), the Yankees played like shit, showed no urgency to win, displayed a lack of hustle, and made the usual array of mistakes. But Mr. Optimistic would rather shine his effervescent light on the fake rally than all of the problems that put his team in an eight-run hole.

“We’ve got to play better than we are right now,” Boone said. “We’ve lost a few series here in a row that we’ve had chances to win all three of them. Obviously, we could have had a couple here. We know we’ve got to be better than this if we want to get to where we want to go. Hopefully catch our breath a little bit and rest up a little bit on an off day. But we’ve got to get after it at Wrigley. I expect us to. We need to be better than this.”

Just like the manager’s office, there was more emptiness in the clubhouse, hollow words from captain Aaron Judge who unfortunately has a lot of those. Watching Judge be interviewed after a game is almost as frustrating as watching Boone because he says nothing of substance. It’s just a string of rehearsed cliches that leave you longing for so much more.

“A couple of back-and-forth games, a couple of games not going our way, stuff like that is going to happen,” Judge said. “We’re not happy about it. We’re fighting for a division, fighting for a lot right now. But we’ve got to keep trusting in each other and things are going to go our way.”

The king of faith, that’s Judge, who by the way has been terrible for more than a week now, homerless in his last nine games and batting .177 with just two RBI, during which time the Yankees are 3-6.

“We are right there with every opportunity to reach our hopes and dreams and that’s because of the season we’ve had as a whole,” Boone said, continuing his glass is always overflowing with wonderfulness monologue. “We’ve put ourselves in position to go grab this thing. But if we want to grab it, we gotta play our best ball, put our best foot forward here with 22 to go. This team right now, that’s all that matters. We gotta get it.”

The season they’ve had as a whole? A 40-19 start which was unsustainable and not at all who the Yankees are, followed by a 40-41 record since which has been very sustainable and is exactly who the Yankees are.

Here are my observations:

➤ Marcus Stroman was terrible. He had nothing, the Rangers were on everything he threw and in just 3.2 innings they scored five runs on nine hits and a walk. That’s right, 10 baserunners allowed, 11 outs recorded. Disgusting. “Just don’t think I executed when I needed to,” Stroman said. “Got in some long counts and they were able to put the barrel on balls.”

➤ This won’t come as a shock, but after Stroman left, the bullpen sucked. As usual. Scott Effross was OK as he finished the fourth for Stroman and handled the fifth without incident, but then Tim Mayza came on for the sixth and gave up a hit and two walks to load the bases.

➤ Here, Boone turned to Mark Leiter and, to the surprise of no one, he shit the bed as he allowed a run for the eighth time in 15 appearances. In the span of his 15 pitches the Rangers scored three times. He immediately gave up a two-run double to Adolis Garcia that made it 7-2, then threw a wild pitch (though Jose Trevino should have stopped it) and that brought in the third run. Mayza was surely in the dugout watching and saying thanks to the trade deadline stiff for allowing all three of the inherited runs to score. Ron Marinaccio contributed a lovely seventh inning by allowing two runs on two hits and a walk. The Yankees bullpen has now allowed 23 runs in its last 14.2 innings of work going back to Sunday against the Cardinals.

➤ Meanwhile, Nathan Eovaldi dominated the Yankees. When these teams met in New York in August the Yankees had a rare good night against the righty and former Red Sox stud who has always had their number. Well, he was back to having their number again. He pitched seven easy innings and the only two runs he allowed came in the fifth when he walked Gleyber Torres and served up a two-run homer to Juan Soto. That was it. The Yankees had just four hits and three walks against him while striking out six times.

➤ In the fake rally ninth, the Rangers used a couple mop-up relievers who proceeded to do a magnificent impersonation of the Yankees bullpen, and Trent Grisham, of all guys, hit a grand slam. Oh, the other three men who were on base? No one got a hit as they all walked. After the slam, Duke Ellis got his first MLB hit and Jazz Chisholm singled so Texas manager Bruce Bochy had to use one of his competent relievers with Giancarlo Stanton up, and Stanton nearly made it a one-run game but Rangers left fielder Wyatt Langford robbed him of a three-run homer to end the game.

➤ Before the game, Boone finally acknowledged the Holmes problem and said the Yankees would essentially play it by ear in the late innings. It was his roundabout way of saying Holmes is not going to be the automatic closer for now and that role will be determined by what the matchups look like. Of course, with the options he has in this bullpen, I’m not sure what favorable matchups he’s going to find. “Want to support Clay through this,” Boone said. “The reality is he’s really not that far off from being the dominant guy we know he can be. But in the short term, we’ll certainly be a little creative down there.”

The Yankees take Thursday off and then head to Wrigley Field to play a Cubs team that has played very well the last two weeks and has kept alive its hopes of earning an NL wild card berth.

The Cubs had won 10 of 12 games before dropping the first two games of their series against the Pirates, but then Wednesday night they pitched a combined no-hitter in winning the finale against Pittsburgh 12-0. Shota Imanaga, Nate Pearson and Porter Hodge did the honors and it was the first no-hitter by the Cubs at Wrigley since Milt Pappas in 1972.

What’s pretty funny is on a night when the White Sox ended their 12-game losing streak by smoking the Orioles, they still can’t steal the headlines in the Windy City. Yeah, that’s the kind of year it’s been on the South Side.

Meanwhile on the North side, the Cubs’ offense has exploded during its hot streak and they have reached double digit runs five times since Aug. 22. Everyone is hitting, and this has all the makings of a long, lousy weekend for the Yankees. They are catching the Cubs at a terrible time, a red hot club that is playing for its postseason life.

The pitching matchups are as follows: Friday at 2:20 on YES it’s Luis Gil (3.39 ERA) against Jordan Wicks (3.82); Saturday at 2:20 on YES it’s Clarke Schmidt (2.52) making his return after three months away against Javier Assad (3.21); and Sunday at 2:20 on YES it’s Gerrit Cole (3.65) against ex-Yankee Jameson Taillon (3.66).

Boone said that Nestor Cortes will skip a start this time through the rotation, but he will be used in a piggyback role with either Gil or Schmidt. Both Gil and Schmidt are making their first starts coming off the injured list, and the Yankees now have six available starters, so Cortes will essentially split one of their starts and then moving forward, Boone has to figure out whether to go with a six-man rotation or move someone to the bullpen.