Without Aaron Judge, Yankees have looked every bit like the last-place team they are

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Aaron Boone read from a familiar script Tuesday night after yet another loss in which his team didn’t produce nearly enough offensively.

“We know we have to do better,” Boone said after the Yankees were two-hit in a 5-1 loss to the Angels.

But the question being asked with regularity in Aaron Judge’s prolonged absence is: can they do better?

Meredith Marakovits, the YES Network’s clubhouse reporter, put it another way after Tuesday’s game, asking Boone: Is this just who you are?

The sixth-year manager’s nostrils flared a bit before answering.

“No, no, no,” Boone said. “There’s no quit in it. We’ve got to fight. We’ve got really good players in there and a lot of guys that are going through a tough, tough stretch. For some, probably as tough a stretch as they’ve been through in their career. You don’t take your ball and go home.”

No one, of course, was suggesting the Yankees do any such thing – that the club should quit or had quit.

The reality, though, is without Judge the Yankees have very much looked like the last-place team they are.

The Yankees, after losing the first two games of the series, entered Wednesday's game at 50-46 and three games behind the Astros for the third and final AL wild-card spot.

Not all last place teams are created equally, naturally, so that Yankees, at four games over .500, don’t belong in the same sentence as, say, the A’s (27-71) or Royals (28-68).

Still, the Yankees, who did drop a weekend series to the Rockies (37-59), have born a closer resemblance to the bottom-dwellers than pretty much any of the playoff contenders with Judge on the IL.

Entering Wednesday the Yankees were 15-21 since Judge last played on June 3, slashing a woeful .218/.290/.367 in that stretch.

“That’s what the story is, so we can correct it. We’ve got the players to do it,” Boone said of the Yankees-can’t-win-without-Judge narrative. “We have the players with track record to do it. I understand that’s the story and it’s fair for this year. We had stretches in ‘19 where we were down Judge and G (Giancarlo Stanton) and kept on banging. Those guys in that clubhouse are very capable. It’s coincided with, obviously, the game’s best player out, so that’s the story. But we’re capable. Still, we’ve got to find it. Simple as that.”

Finding it comes down to veterans like Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu and Stanton getting on the kind of rolls that have mostly eluded them since Judge has been out. Additionally, Harrison Bader has also been slumping, as has, once again, rookie Anthony Volpe.

Boone did not rule out the possibility of players putting additionally pressure on themselves in an attempt to make up for Judge’s bat out of the lineup.

“We’ve got the guys capable of doing it and it’s on all of us,” Boone said. “On me, on the coaches, on staff, on players, to again, strike that balance. Because the care factor is so much and the game’s so damn hard and hitting is so hard, you’ve got to strike that balance between coming in focused, work, preparation, now 7 o’clock hits and, man, let’s go play the game. Like a kid. And we’ve got to find that balance.”

Which is always easier when the Ws rack up rather than the Ls.

“It’s definitely a mental game,” Rizzo said. “It’s hard to have fun when you’re getting your teeth kicked in, individually and as a team… part of being in this league and being a professional is making sure you come in every day and no matter what happens the day before, whether you’re winning 10 games or losing 10 games in a row, you’ve got to come and be ready for that game. Guys are coming in and doing their work. We’re grinding right now, that’s for sure.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.