Erik Boland: Yankees' hitters haven't helped their pitchers much
Yankees' Aaron Judge reacts after a strike during the fifth inning of a game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field on Saturday in St. Petersburg, Fla. Credit: Getty Images/Kevin Sabitus
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The one element of the 2026 Yankees that has performed exactly as the organization believed it would is the starting rotation.
Even with Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon beginning the season on the injured list, when they left spring training, the Yankees thought they had more than enough to mitigate those injuries, something that proved to be the case in the first 14 games.
Max Fried, the best of what has been a standout group, kept it going Saturday night against the Rays at Tropicana Field, allowing three runs, six hits and no walks through eight innings.
Much to his consternation, however, Fried twice gave up one-run leads provided by a still-sputtering offense, and David Bednar gave up a third lead in a 5-4, 10-inning loss.
“The guys did enough to win tonight,” Fried said. “That’s definitely on me.”
Spoken like a true clubhouse leader, but far from the entire truth of the Yankees’ fourth straight loss.
Jose Caballero’s two-out, two-run double in the top of the eighth gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead, and his two-out RBI single in the 10th put the Yankees ahead 4-3. But Yandy Diaz’s RBI single in the eighth tied it at 3-3 and Jonathan Aranda’s fielder’s-choice grounder capped a deciding two-run rally against Bednar as the Yankees went 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position and left 12 on base.
Of the Yankees’ six losses, five have been by one run (including 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 defeats) and one has been by two runs.
Lack of offensive production has been the primary culprit. It certainly hasn’t been the rotation.
Fried made it 14 straight starts in which the starter allowed three or fewer runs. The rotation entered the night first in MLB in ERA (2.40), second in opponents’ slugging percentage (.273) and opponents’ OPS (.533) and third in opponents on-base percentage (.260) and WHIP (0.98).
But after starting Wednesday’s game against the A’s with three straight hits, the Yankees’ drawing-blood-from-a-stone offense went 12-for-109 and scored four runs in the next 33 innings.
“It’s surprising for everyone,” said Caballero, who entered the night 5-for-40 (.125) and was 0-for-3 before his first big hit. “We all know what we’re capable of and the results aren’t showing up. We just have to get better.”
“We’ve got to hit. That’s it,” Austin Wells said after Friday’s 5-3 loss. “We’ve got to take pressure off these guys on the mound. They’re doing a great job for us. So we’ve got to string some at-bats together and hit a couple big ones and get rolling.”
Wells, who entered Saturday 5-for-33 (.152), hit his first homer of the season in the second to give Fried his first lead. It was the kind of swing that could get a team’s offense rolling . . . except it didn’t, aside from Caballero.
Wells flied out and grounded out in his next two at-bats, and with runners at second and third and one out in the eighth, he flied to shallow leftfield. Caballero’s double bailed him out, but that was only a momentary reprieve for a group that top-to-bottom, other than Ben Rice and Giancarlo Stanton, has struggled. Chisholm is 9-for-52 (.173), Trent Grisham is 6-for-41 (.146) and Ryan McMahon is 3-for-31 (.097).
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know,” Chisholm said of the offense’s failure to launch. “We’re trying, we’re working. Every day you see everybody . . . they come in here and put in the work. I can’t give you an answer on why it’s not happening, but we’re going to keep grinding through it until we make it happen.”
One of the few who had been making it happen from Day 1 of the season — and from Day 1 of spring training, really — is Rice. He entered Saturday hitting .342 (13-for-38) with a team-leading four homers and a team-leading 1.253 OPS. He went 1-for-3 with a double and two walks (one intentional) on Saturday.
“I don’t think there’s any concern,” he said Friday. “We’re so early in the year, and of course, we got off to a hot start as well. I think everyone is very calm here and understands there’s a long road ahead. We’ve got the team that can take us where we want to go.”
As bad as the offense has appeared — Caballero’s clutch hits didn’t change that look dramatically — there is no reason to think the confidence expressed inside the clubhouse is unfounded.
There’s no reason not to think, to use a frequently used phrase of Boone’s, “it’s just a matter of time” before the offense clicks.
But the wait for it to do that has been a bit tough on the eyes.
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.
