Yankees held to two hits, fall to Angels for third straight loss
Anthony Rizzo of the Yankees looks on after striking out during the ninth inning of a game against the Angels at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on Tuesday in Anaheim, Calif. Credit: Getty Images/Sean M. Haffey
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Team Titanic arrived at the bottom of the American League East standings in sole possession of last place after Monday night’s extra-inning loss to the Angels.
The Yankees have shown few signs they’ll be extracting themselves from that ignominious position anytime soon.
With Patrick Sandoval just the latest opposing pitcher to get healthy against their still-sad offense, the Yankees were two-hit in a 5-1 loss to the Angels on Tuesday in front of 41,556 at Angels Stadium.
“The mood’s down for sure,” said Anthony Rizzo, who went 0-for-4 and is in a 9-for-65 (.138) slump. “We definitely expect better of ourselves individually and as a team. And it’s OK to be down right now. This is a low point ... It’s hard to have fun when you get your teeth kicked in, individually and as a team.”
The Yankees (50-46), who have lost three in a row and eight of their last 10, fell to 1-4 on this trip to start the second half, a half that began with much pomp and circumstance over the hiring of Sean Casey as hitting coach.
Indeed, maybe the fired Dillon Lawson wasn’t the problem after all.
Gleyber Torres accounted for the Yankees’ lone run, hitting a solo homer in the third that cut his team’s deficit to 2-1. The Yankees didn’t get another hit until Anthony Volpe’s one-out single in the eighth, the game all but over at that point.
Domingo German, who threw the 24th perfect game in baseball history June 28 in Oakland, made it two of three starts since then that have been subpar, allowing five runs, four hits and three walks over six innings in which he did strike out nine. The righthander was outperformed by yet another subpar starter excelling against the Yankees’ offense, which came into the night hitting .221 with a .294 on-base percentage without Aaron Judge, who hasn’t played since June 3 (the Yankees are 15-21 since Judge went down). The lefthanded Sandoval, who came in 4-7 with a 4.41 ERA, allowed one run and two hits over 7 1/3 innings.
Aaron Boone went to his greatest-hits list afterward, saying, “We know we have to do better.”
But at this point, without Judge, is this just who and what his team is?
“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.”
Boone continued: “You stick your nose in there and you grind it out and you compete your [butt] off. We’re doing that, they’re doing that, they’re not leaving any stone unturned. It’s not from a lack of work and focus and conversations. We’re going to keep competing and that’s going to get to be a boring answer for you guys until we break through, but that’s the only thing we can do and the only thing we know how to do. And it’s not accepting anything. Not when we have the group that we know we’re capable of. But we have to get it out. We have to find it.”
Shohei Ohtani, who hit a back-breaking two-run homer in the seventh inning Monday off Michael King to tie the score in the Yankees' 4-3 loss, went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI triple. But the Angels' big producer Tuesday night was Mickey Moniak, the first-round pick of the Phillies in the 2016 draft who arrived here in a deal last summer that sent Noah Syndergaard to Philadelphia. Moniak was 3-for-4 with three RBIs.
His two-run homer in the first — his 11th homer — got the Angels off to a 2-0 lead.
Torres, the only Yankee to consistently hit on this trip, blasted his 14th homer of the season in the third to make it 2-1, improving the second baseman to 14-for-28 in his last seven games.
German allowed a run in the bottom half that made it 3-1 and the Angels made it 5-1 in the fifth, on Ohtani’s RBI triple and Moniak’s RBI single that followed.
“We have enough time,” German said through his interpreter of the Yankees’ place in the standings and climbing out of it. “When you look at this clubhouse, the talent in this clubhouse, a lot of experience. We have to make some adjustments and we have to do it with a sense of urgency because you don’t want it to get too far away from you.”
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.
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