Slumping Yankees say 'there's no reason to panic' despite going 30-38 since being an MLB-best 50-22 in June

CHICAGO – The Yankee captain stood in a visiting clubhouse addressing another rough loss in early September that had his skidding team desperately trying to hold off the Orioles in a tense race for the American League East title.

“Who's panicking? You? Are you panicking?'' Derek Jeter asked rhetorically late on the night of Sept. 3, 2012 after a 4-3 loss to the Rays in St. Petersburg that helped bring the Orioles within a game of first place. “How do you deal with panic? I don't panic. So I don't have to deal with it. Everyone deals with it differently. But I'm not one to panic."

The word came up just over 12 years later in Globe Life Field’s visiting clubhouse.

It emerged -- though not from the mouth of current captain Aaron Judge -- late Wednesday night in Arlington after the slumping 2024 Yankees lost a series to the out-of-contention Rangers with a 10-6 loss that kept them one-half game behind the Orioles.

“There’s no reason to panic,” leftfielder Alex Verdugo said. “We’ve been in this tight AL race all year long. It’s just a couple series. We’re right there. We’re going to go to Chicago, handle business over there and kind of right the ship.”

Jeter’s Yankees, who lost again on Sept. 4 to fall into a division tie, righted their ship down the stretch, going 19-8 from Sept. 5 on to edge Buck Showalter’s Orioles by two games (the Yankees would beat Baltimore in a five-game division series before being swept by the Tigers in the ALCS).

Indeed, there was no panic in that clubhouse and, despite the demands of some fans and media for every slumping team to spew out vacuous “we need a sense of urgency” or “it’s panic time” cliches, there’s no need for it with these Yankees, who start a three-game series at Wrigley Field Friday afternoon after Thursday’s off day.

Because here’s a not so dirty secret: the American League is filled with unrelentingly flawed contenders, the Yankees included.

Hence, even as the Yankees have gone 30-38 since being an MLB-best 50-22 on June 14, they still brought an 80-60 record into Thursday, good enough to tie them with Cleveland for the AL’s second-best record (and tied for the fifth-best record in the majors).

The Orioles, generally regarded as the league’s best top-to-bottom team – yet still severely flawed – haven’t taken advantage of the Yankees’ plight since mid-June. That the Yankees are eight games under .500 after June 15, yet were only one-half game behind the Orioles as of Thursday is a testament to Baltimore’s deficiencies. The O’s are 36-36 in that same period.

A stretch, incidentally, in which the Orioles bullpen has engaged in an anything-you-can-do-we-can-do-worse back-and-forth with the Yankees bullpen.

Tick off the list of other contenders.

The Guardians? Best corps of relievers by far but offensive inconsistencies across the board. The Royals? A good, young, athletic team but with plenty of holes and an organization still reeling from the broken thumb recently suffered by first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino. The Twins? Their record against the Yankees the last two decades-plus – both in the regular season and postseason – makes the electoral college tally from Reagan-Mondale in 1984 seem competitive. The Astros? Ok, yes, that name combined with “in October” continues to cause collective PTSD in the Yankees organization – as well within the fan base – though that line of thinking doesn’t extend to the clubhouse.

The overall point, of course, is it’s easy to envision the Yankees doing everything in the postseason from claiming a spot in the World Series for the first time since last winning it in 2009, to getting beat in the Wild Card round.

And the same can be said of every other team that qualifies (except, naturally, for the Twins who, until they prove otherwise, simply can’t be trusted in October).

Are the Yankees capable of duplicating, or coming close to, the 2012 club that went 19-8 to end the regular season?

They haven’t shown that degree of consistency since the first two months of the season, but that 50-22 start didn’t happen by accident. Then again, neither did 30-38.

In the end, though, the get-it-together finish everyone is clamoring for as necessary portends nothing.

The 2000 Yankees, for instance, won just three of their final 18 games to win the East by 2 ½ over the Red Sox, but doing so at 87-74.

The Yankees promptly got hot in the postseason and won a third straight title.

Twenty-two games to go . . .