Without Aaron Judge, the Yankees Offense is Flat Out Terrible

I’m warning you right now, read at your own peril, but you know I’m going to tell it like it is, and this series really pissed me off because not only did the Yankees lose two of three to the Red Sox, they were just so incredibly feeble and aggravating on offense all weekend.

Right now, the Yankees are as unwatchable as any team in baseball, and if you think I’m crazy, then I will assume you did not see that absolute shit show on Sunday Night Baseball which ended in a 3-2 loss to the Red Sox.

I’m not sure a team can be any worse on offense than the Yankees were Sunday night, but really, that’s been the case from the moment Aaron Judge stubbed his toe in Los Angeles. We may look back on that unfortunate incident as the moment when this season began its slow descent into the land of six feet under because this team is terrible without him, and he’s not going to be playing for a while so the ugliness is far from over.

It is absolutely amazing that in a sport where 10 men are in the lineup each and every night and the nine guys in the batting order all have an equal opportunity to help the team win - one of the many reasons why baseball is the best game - that one missing player can make such a difference, but that’s the case with Judge.

This season, the Yankees are now 8-10 when Judge doesn’t play, and they average 3.3 runs per game. I actually thought it was worse when I was looking that up. With Judge in the lineup, they’re 30-19 and average 5.0 runs per game. Shohei Ohtani is a two-way player who is a star pitcher and a star hitter, but the Angels would not miss him more than the Yankees miss Judge.

It just further illuminates how weak this roster is that Brian Cashman put together. Look at these lineups that they’re using on a nightly basis, and to be honest, even with Judge healthy, the lineup is still filled with guys who are either past their time of usefulness, or are never going to be useful. The difference is his presence, like a tide, raises all boats.

His absence is crushing this team and making matters worse, the so-called core players, the veterans who are supposed to pick up the slack, have been the worst players on the team.

On this now-concluded ugly 2-4 homestand, the Yankees scored 17 runs including just seven against the Red Sox. On the homestand, Anthony Rizzo went 0-for-19, and taking it back to when he hurt his neck against the Padres, he’s 1-for-30; Gleyber Torres was 4-for-20; DJ LeMahieu was 3-for-15; Giancarlo Stanton was 1-for-14; and Josh Donaldson was 2-for-18. It’s somewhat of a miracle that they won two games last week, but that was only because their pitching remains strong and is keeping them in every game.

It would seem impossible to have so many guys in such ruts at the same time, but here we are, living it. And it’s not like anyone else is doing much of anything. Anthony Volpe has been in a putrid 7-for-65 slide and it might be time for him to go to Scranton and figure things out because the kid is lost. Oswaldo Cabrera has stunk all season, and while Willie Calhoun, Jake Bauers and Billy McKinney have had their moments, come on, what are we talking about here? The Yankees aren’t going anywhere with those guys playing every night.

The Yankees production from left field, third base, shortstop and catcher is among the very worst in MLB. Four positions where they get almost nothing on a daily basis. As a team, the Yankees now have an on-base percentage of .301 which is better than only the 18-47 Royals, the 29-38 White Sox and the 26-37 Tigers. Nice company to keep there, huh? The A’s, who are 17-50 but have won five in a row, are at .307. Think about that for a second. They’re getting on base more frequently than the Bronx Bums.

The Yankees are such a mess, they almost lost a player in live batting practice before Sunday’s game. Carlos Rodon, who provided proof that he actually exists, was throwing and he hit Calhoun on the elbow with a fastball. Calhoun was clearly stung and went right into the clubhouse for treatment. Thankfully, he was fine and able to play in the game, not that it mattered.

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

June 9: Red Sox 3, Yankees 2

➤ Gerrit Cole was good but he was not great and unfortunately for him, while it’s not fair, he needs to be great every time out with this lame offense supporting him. He lasted six innings and gave up two runs on seven hits and a walk, and of course Rafael Devers was a one-man wrecking crew. The guy hasn’t even had a very good season to date, but you put the Yankees in front of him - especially Cole - and he becomes Babe Ruth.

➤ I’m convinced Devers is pure evil. There is a long list of players who seem to kill the Yankees, but Devers is the new president of the club. He is the modern day version of David Ortiz against the Yankees. He doubled in the fourth and scored the first run on a Triston Casas two-out single, and then he homered in the sixth to make it 2-0. It was his seventh home run off Cole, the most Cole has allowed to any opponent. Devers owns Cole and that’s a big reason why Cole has been so bad when he faces the Red Sox. Since he joined the Yankees, he has pitched 513 innings against all the other teams and has a 3.02 ERA. Against only Boston, it’s 60 innings and a 5.10 ERA.

➤ Donaldson, as I expected he would be, is horrible. He homered again in the sixth, meaning five of his six hits have been home runs. But do you see a problem there? Yeah, five homers is nice. But he’s hitting .143 (through Sunday) because he’s been completely useless in every other at bat except one when he had a single. I’m not kidding - he has six hits all season.

➤ Albert Abreu had been pitching fairly well lately, but he gave up a solo homer to Kike Hernandez in the seventh which proved to be the winning run. The Yankees scored in the bottom of the seventh as Isiah Kiner-Falefa did it all. He singled (it should have been scored an error on the second baseman), stole second and kept going to third on a throwing error by the catcher, and then scored on a wild pitch. It was a sequence that proved the Red Sox aren’t a good team, yet they still won the series. Torres had walked on the wild pitch, but Volpe and LeMahieu made outs to kill the rally. LeMahieu had two singles but both were early in the game and led to nothing, but when it mattered later, he came up with a man on first in his last two at bats and failed.

➤ In the eighth, with Chris Martin pitching for the Red Sox, the Yankees alleged top guys - Donaldson, Rizzo and Stanton - were retired on 11 pitches. Pathetic. And in the ninth against Kenley Jansen who has been terrible lately as the Red Sox closer, McKinney and Torres hit back-to-back two-out singles, but Volpe popped out to end it, moments after he nearly won the game with a walk-off homer that just curved foul. Yet another ugly night for the Yankees.

BOX SCORE

June 10: Yankees 3, Red Sox 1

➤ Domingo German pitched another excellent game, and at this point I guess it’s no longer a surprise. Outside of the stupidity of his sticky stuff suspension, he’s been the Yankees second-best starter this season by a wide, wide margin. He pitched six innings and though he had traffic on the bases in every inning, he got out of everything except the home run by Devers, and that’s only because, as I stated earlier, Devers’ sole mission in life seems to be to crush Yankee pitching.

➤ German got out of a second and third jam in the second inning by getting Hernandez to line out to short; in the third, Justin Turner was on third with two outs and Devers hit a ball deep to left and Bauers robbed him of a double with a great run-saving catch; and in the sixth, after the Devers home run, Adam Duvall singled and was at second with one out but German whiffed Christian Arroyo and got Reese McGuire on a foul pop. The Yankees have won five of German’s last seven starts and he has pitched to a 2.20 ERA across 41 innings while the opponents are batting .178 against him with a .250 on-base. That’s outstanding work.

➤ Wandy Peralta took over in the seventh and after two quick outs, Masataka Yoshida turned into the most annoying hitter on the planet as he fouled off eight straight 3-2 pitches before drawing a 14-pitch walk. An exhausted Peralta then walked Turner, so that brought Devers to the plate for the biggest at bat of the game and even though it was lefty on lefty, I expected Aaron Boone to pull Peralta and go with Tommy Kahnle. He didn’t, and thankfully Devers swung at the second pitch and shockingly grounded weakly to second to end the threat. After that, Kahnle and Clay Holmes worked two uneventful innings to close it out.

➤ The Yankees runs came on solo homers by Torres in the fourth and Calhoun in the sixth, and then in the seventh IKF singled and eventually scored on a single by Kyle Higashioka. Torres’ homer was the first hit off Red Sox starter Tanner Houck who retired the first nine Yankees with ease including six strikeouts. He left the game after six innings with a 5.23 season ERA having allowed just two runs on three hits, another indictment on how weak the Yankee offense is right now.

➤ Rizzo was benched for the night, while Donaldson, Stanton, LeMahieu and Volpe once again came up woefully empty (combined 0-for-12). Pitching won this game, pure and simple.

BOX SCORE

June 11: Red Sox 3, Yankees 2 (10)

➤ At this point in the newsletter, I think I’ve exhausted every way possible to describe just how bad this offense is, but then they found new depths in this one. They managed three hits in 10 innings and two of those came in the second inning when they scored their only two runs. Oh, and one of those hits, the one by Trevino, was pure luck as it bounced off second base and caromed into the outfield allowing both McKinney (double) and Donaldson (walk) to score. Without that lucky break, only one of the runs would have scored and Trevino would have been thrown out at first. The only other hit was a LeMahieu single in the fourth.

➤ Clarke Schmidt was good as he pitched one out into the sixth and gave up just one run on four hits with no walks. It should have been enough to earn a victory, but his teammates let him down. The only run he gave up was Turner’s homer leading off the second. Nick Ramirez retired three men, the last being Devers in the seventh when he fielded his tapper and beat Devers to first by diving to the bag glove first, ala Nestor Cortes last year.

➤ Michael King came in and walked Turner but got Casas to hit into a double play. However, in the eighth, King faltered. He gave up a leadoff single to Hernandez who then took second when Torres committed yet another brain dead play. The throw came in from left field and was slightly off line, and somehow Torres made almost no effort to field it. He skipped right past him and Hernandez alertly took second. You had to see it to believe it. It was Little League stuff, almost as egregious as Rizzo getting picked off at second in the sixth inning. Just stupid, stupid mistakes by veterans who need to be smarter and better. “The error is on me,” Torres said. “I should’ve grabbed the ball. It was nothing difficult.” Naturally, that proved humongous because King made matters worse with a walk and then after a sacrifice bunt, Hernandez was on third where he scored on a grounder to tie the game.

➤ Finally in the 10th, with the free runner at second, Boston him moved to third with a groundout against Ron Marinaccio and Hernandez singled him home through a drawn in infield. In the bottom half, the Yankees free runner, LeMahieu, took third on a fly out, but with two chances to get him home, Trevino and Volpe struck out to end the game and cap an awful team performance.

BOX SCORE

 ➤ June 11, 2003: Combined no-hitters are complete bullshit as far as I’m concerned. Once the starting pitcher leaves his no-hitter, I’m done with it. To old school me, the only no-hitters that deserve recognition are solo jobs where the pitcher finishes what he starts.

For instance, last week, Lucas Giolito was no-hitting the Yankees through six innings, but the White Sox turned the game over to the bullpen, so had they been able to complete the no-hitter, I might have made a snide remark about the sagging Yankees offense, but the result wouldn’t have meant anything other than it was just another loss.

That’s why what happened on this date 20 years ago just felt so slimy, and maybe this is where our shared hatred of the Astros really began, long before they became a dominant team that owns the Yankees in the playoffs. Houston became the first team to no-hit the Yankees in 45 years as six pitchers - a record for a combined no-hitter - muzzled one of the best teams in baseball on one lucky night in the Bronx.

Roy Oswalt started for Houston but got hurt after just one inning, so relievers Pete Munro, Kirk Saarloos, Brad Lidge, Octavio Dotel and Billy Wagner carried the weight and the Yankees were just terrible. Manager Joe Torre said afterward, “This is one of the worst games I’ve ever been involved in. It was a total, inexcusable performance.”

It snapped a streak of 6,980 games in which the Yankees had managed at least one hit. The last time they were no-hit before this was by aging Orioles knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm on Sept. 20, 1958 during a 1-0 victory at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The Astros pulled another combined no-hitter against the Yankees in 2022, bringing to eight the number of times the Yankees have been no-hit in their history.

The first half of the annual four-game Subway Series gets underway Tuesday night with two games at Citi Field and the participating teams, with two of the biggest payrolls in the sport, are in a bad way.

I think I’ve covered the Yankees current state of misery, but at least they aren’t the Mets who hold the distinction of being MLB’s most disappointing team, and it really isn’t that close. Mega-billionaire Steve Cohen has poured more money into the 2023 Mets than any team in the history of the sport, and what has that bought him? A 31-35 record, good for fourth place in the NL East, 9.5 games behind the Braves, the same deficit the Yankees sit behind the Rays in the AL East.

Buck Showalter’s club is in dire straits as it has lost eight of its last nine games including two of three to the Pirates over the weekend. That came on the heels of a disastrous three-game sweep in Atlanta where they led in all three games by at least three runs and managed to lose them all.

Like Judge, slugging first baseman Pete Alonso is on the injured list so two guys with a combined 41 homers will be watching from their respective dugouts. Francisco Lindor has been terrible as he’s hitting .218, and Starling Marte is finally starting to show his age. The Mets do have three of their top prospects up - first baseman Mark Vientos, third baseman Brett Baty and catcher Francisco Alvarez - but they have produced indifferent results with the exception of Alvarez’s 12 home runs.

The pitching matchups would be world class in a previous time, but all four guys have had struggles lately. Tuesday at 7:10 on YES and SNY it’s Luis Severino (5.75) against Max Scherzer (3.71) and Wednesday at 7:10 on YES and SNY it’s Cole (2.84) against Justin Verlander (4.85).