Aaron Hicks has tough night as loss to Rays cuts Yankees' lead to 3 1/2 games
Aaron Hicks of the Yankees removes his elbow guard after striking out with two men on to end the bottom of the third inning of a MLB game against the Rays at Yankee Stadium on Friday. Credit: James Escher
The crowd arrived early — not always the case at the Stadium — to honor the face of baseball’s most recent dynasty.
Luminaries from championships past — Andy Pettitte, Tino Martinez, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, CC Sabathia and Joe Torre — were introduced to one loud ovation after another, with the biggest and loudest cheers of all coming for the night’s honoree, Derek Jeter.
And that concluded the highlight portion of the evening for Yankees fans, whose 2022 reality increasingly appears as if it could include a historic collapse.
With the Yankees again not looking sharp at the plate or in the field, they fell to the Rays, 4-2, in front of 46,160 mostly disgruntled fans.
The Yankees (83-56), who led the Rays by 15 1/2 games on July 8 and still led by 12 games on Aug. 12, now are only 3 1/2 games ahead, two in the loss column. (The Rays are 20-5 and the Yankees are 12-14 since Aug. 12.) For that matter, the Blue Jays are only five games behind the Yankees, four in the loss column.
The fans turned the vast majority of their ire on the player they consider the face of the club’s ongoing struggles. Aaron Hicks was booed vociferously after striking out in each of his first two at-bats, and that level of anger was raised significantly in the fourth inning after Hicks twice failed to come up with fly balls, leading to three runs and a 4-0 deficit. Both balls certainly could have been caught, especially the first one, but were not routine and were scored as hits.
The reaction was so ferocious that Aaron Boone replaced Hicks with Estevan Florial to begin the fifth. Afterward, Boone repeatedly said pulling Hicks was not punitive. “I just felt like I needed to get him out of there at that point,'' he said. "It just felt like it was all just a factor [boos and performance] and I just felt like I needed to do it at that moment in time . . . I guess it's all part of why I made the decision, feeling like it [crowd reaction] was having an effect and I just felt like I needed to do it . . . I told him pretty much right away [after the inning]. He was pretty frustrated and upset. There wasn't a lot of conversation about it.”
Hicks' reaction to Boone's move: “I got benched. I got benched during the game. That’s rough. Especially when all you want to do is produce for your team and your first two at-bats are strikeouts. I just have to prepare for tomorrow.”
Aaron Judge had a two-out RBI single in the seventh — Oswald Peraza originally was called out at the plate, but the call was overturned — and the Yankees threatened in the ninth. Kyle Higashioka (three hits) homered with one out, Judge walked with two outs and Gleyber Torres drove Manuel Margot back to the rightfield wall as his bid for a tying two-run homer fell just short.
Hicks, who struck out in the first, saw his night completely unravel starting in the bottom of the third with the Yankees trailing 1-0.
Higashioka led off the inning with a single and went to second on Judge’s one-out single to left (third-base umpire Nick Mahrley initially ruled Randy Arozarena made a clean diving catch, but the Yankees challenged and the call was overturned as the leftfielder clearly trapped the ball). Torres struck out and Hicks heard it from the crowd as he struck out to extend his skid to 7-for-53 (.132) — but those boos were mild compared with what Hicks heard in the top of the fourth.
With two on and two outs, Wander Franco sliced a drive toward the leftfield line. Hicks raced over and was in position to make a backhand catch as he reached the line, but the ball hit the lower part of the glove and fell out, allowing both runners to score. Even worse, Hicks paused momentarily with the ball at his feet before finally picking it up and throwing it in.
“I don’t know how I missed it,'' he said. "It was in my glove and all of a sudden it’s out of my glove. Next thing you know, runners are running all around and scoring. It’s a play you have to make . . . When you’re the guy that doesn’t make the play, it’s rough.”
He also said, ''I thought I was in foul ground. I should have, as soon as I missed it, got the ball in as fast as possible.”
Arozarena, who doubled in a run in the first for a 1-0 lead, then swung at a first-pitch slider and lined it hard to left. Hicks didn’t appear to get a good read on the ball and mistimed his jump, and the ball sailed over his head for an RBI double that made it 4-0. Judge put his arm around Hicks in a show of support, but the lack of offensive and defensive support the Yankees gave Frankie Montas couldn't be overcome.
Montas, was not helped by his defense but wasn’t particularly good in allowing four runs and nine hits in 5 2⁄3 innings.
Rays righty Drew Rasmussen, who entered the night 9-4 with a 2.70 ERA, allowed six hits in six scoreless innings in which he struck out a season-high 10.
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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