Yankees again sputter offensively in loss to Blue Jays
Aaron Judge of the Yankees strikes out in the fifth inning against the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
After describing his team as “ticked off” following yet another lackluster offensive performance Friday night, Aaron Boone watched the Yankees lay another egg Saturday afternoon.
A silver lining?
At least it wasn’t a string of goose eggs. Only seven of them.
The fiery verbiage of the previous night mattered not at all as the Yankees again swung the bats as if they were made of balsa wood in a 5-2 loss to the Blue Jays in front of an angry crowd of 45,538 at the Stadium that made its thoughts about the home team evident throughout.
“We’re not winning. Any time you don’t win, boos are warranted,” said Aaron Judge, who had two infield singles Saturday but went homerless for an eighth straight game and remained stuck on 46. “But it’s just motivation. The fans that come [out] and pay good money to see us do our thing, they come to see us win and we’re not winning. They have every right to do that.”
The Yankees outhit Toronto 9-7, but they had a 7-0 lead in hits through four innings before going 2-for-17 in the last five innings. Of the skidding offense, Judge said: “I feel like some of the stuff I’m seeing is just individual at-bats instead of team at-bats. Once we turn that around, we’ll be right back where we need to be.”
The Yankees (73-48) lead Toronto by seven games (six in the loss column). On July 8, they held a 15 1/2-game lead over the Rays and a 16 1/2-game lead over the Blue Jays, but they have gone 12-25 since then, including 14 losses in the last 17 games.
In the last 11 games, the Yankees have scored 21 runs, their worst offensive output since 1990. And even that statistic doesn't tell the story, because aside from their 8-7 win over the Rays on Wednesday, they have scored 13 runs in 10 games, hitting .167.
And it doesn't figure to get better anytime soon. In their next three games, they will face Alec Manoah (12-6, 2.71 ERA, 1.04 WHIP), Max Scherzer (9-2, 2.15 ERA, 0.93 WHIP) and Jacob deGrom (2-1, 2.31 ERA, 0.51 WHIP).
Judge said he’s noticed a certain “energy” lacking in the dugout during this slump, adding later: “I think it just starts from the very beginning of the game, just having that chip on your shoulder that ‘hey, we’re going to win this game.’ I think at times right now, even myself personally, we’re looking for someone else to come up with the big hit or do something. We can’t have that mentality. We have to have the mentality that every time we step up to the plate, ‘I’m going to be the guy that gets it done.’ We have to turn it around.”
Aaron Boone, who provided most of the fire after Friday night's game, slammed his right hand on the table during Saturday’s postgame news conference while discussing another offensive flameout in an endless string of them.
“You can ask all these questions; we’ve answered them until we’re blue in the face. We have to go out and do it. I have to quit answering these questions about this date, [about being perplexed], we have to play better. Period. And the great thing is, it’s right in front of us,” said Boone, bringing his hand down on the table. “It’s right here. And we can fix it. It’s there and we can run away with this thing and we have the dudes in there to do it. We’ve got to do it. If we don’t score, it’s tough to win.”
Gerrit Cole, spotted a 1-0 lead in the second on Estevan Florial’s RBI single, took a no-hitter into the fifth. But that quickly morphed into a nightmarish 30-pitch inning in which the Blue Jays put up four runs on two-run doubles by Jackie Bradley Jr. and Alejandro Kirk. Gleyber Torres led off the eighth with his 18th homer to make it 4-2, but Matt Chapman homered onto the net above Monument Park against Albert Abreu in the ninth.
Even if Cole (9-6, 3.41) had pitched like an ace, he still might have been done in by the offense, which was shut out in five of the previous 13 games.
“The reality is when I look at that lineup today, I know it’s a lineup capable of going out there and putting up points, putting up crooked numbers,” Boone said before the game.
But it simply turned out to be same old, same old, at least of late, The Yankees went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position and stranded nine, seven in the first four innings.
Boone noted that the Yankees have been getting pitches to hit and fouling them off. “At this level, you can’t put them on the net, and I felt like we did that too much today,” he said. “Through this stretch, I feel like we’ve been pitched tough a lot. Today, I felt like we had opportunities in that game early on. You have to take advantage and [we] didn’t once again.”
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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