Somebody needs to remind the Yankees the season hasn’t ended yet.
They have yet to win a series all month. And they just handed the rival Red Sox their first series win of the season against an AL East team. The alleged Bronx Bombers are 3-9 in August and just can’t seem to get what was once a thriving lineup going.
That means by NFL standards, we should cancel the rest of the season and focus on the winter. Sadly, that isn’t an option and the Yankees must now prep for what may be their hardest stretch of the season up to this point.
Some takeaways:
Let Aroldis Chapman close again. The loop in baseball’s space-time continuum must have closed because Chapman looks unstoppable once again. He hasn’t allowed a run this month and allowed just one walk in six games. At the same time “All-Star closer” Clay Holmes is tired, unreliable and everything in between.
And yet, manager Aaron Boone still says the Yankees will “mix and match” for now. Hard no, terrible idea, full stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. That hasn’t worked at all since Holmes lost his command. Chapman is looking like himself again. Use that in the ninth inning before yet another walk-off loss.
The lineup has no confidence. The Isiah Kiner-Falefa Game was a lot of fun on Saturday, but underscores a key issue we’ve seen with the Yankees since mid-June. Everyone in the lineup aside from Aaron Judge is streaky. It’s almost disheartening, especially after the team hit so well in the first half of the season.
Maybe it’s that Giancarlo Stanton’s injury absence leaves that much of a void. He’s thankfully starting to ramp up, but DJ LeMahieu sat out Sunday’s game with a sore foot and toe and will get imaging tests back in New York Monday. The Yankees are exactly .500 since June 15, and the lineup needs to get out of whatever funk it’s in sooner rather than later.
Can the Yankees compete over the next week? The next week’s worth of games for the Yankees might as well be the Hunger Games. Nine games at Yankee Stadium against the Rays, Blue Jays, and Mets. What’s sad is they could lose every single one of those games and still be in first place.
Granted, these cold streaks are not uncommon to teams that either won or made a World Series. The Dodgers lost 16 of 17 in August-September 2017, including 11 in a row, and the ’96 Yankees were sub-.500 in August. The hot start set a high standard. Now, it’s time for this New York team to learn how to meet it again.
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