If Yankees faceplant again coming out of All-Star break, their season will end quickly
Aroldis Chapman of the Yankees leaves a game in the seventh inning against the Mets during the first game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium on July 4. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Eight games behind the Red Sox in the AL East.
Eight of the next 10 games against them.
The math doesn’t get any simpler for the Yankees coming out of the All-Star break. We can skip the super-computer algorithms. In sizing up their odds of getting back into this divisional race, you don’t even need a calculator.
Either the Yankees say enough’s enough after going 0-6 against the Red Sox, including a pair of three-game sweeps only three weeks apart -- one each in the Bronx and Fenway -- or they wave goodbye to Alex Cora & Co. for the next three months.
How’s that for a humbling scenario? Season on the brink barely scratches the surface of what the Yankees are facing, and their 2021 track record in these situations doesn’t inspire much confidence.
Expect Aaron Boone to draw another line in the sand during Thursday’s pregame presser. But he’s already done that a handful of times, and on just about every occasion, either the Red Sox, Angels, Mets or Astros have kicked the dirt right back in the Yankees’ faces.
Leading up to the All-Star break, over the span of 15 days, the Yankees got swept at Fenway Park -- Gerrit Cole was brutalized in the Sunday finale -- then suffered three of their most gruesome losses of the season, blowing sizable leads to the Angels, Mets and Astros in their final at-bats.
The common denominator for all of those was embattled closer Aroldis Chapman, who never made it through the bullpen door during last weekend’s showdown in Houston. Since June 23, he’s made only three appearances, posting a 34.71 ERA with five strikeouts and eight walks over 2 1/3 innings. Opponents are raking him at a .462 clip with a 1.605 OPS over that period.
Sure, it’s a tiny sample size, but plenty big enough that Boone didn’t allow him anywhere near the mound at Minute Maid Park, despite the Yankees’ bullpen meltdown in the first-half finale, an 8-7 walkoff loss to the Astros, courtesy of -- who else? -- suspected buzzer-boy Jose Altuve.
While you can’t really pin season-wrecking significance to one "L" out of 162, the Yankees seemingly have perfected the art of the catastrophic defeat, a stunning development for a $200-million roster that most people (including myself) pencilled in for the World Series back in February. And every time we’re led to believe that championship pedigree might break through for good -- say after Cole’s gutsy 129-pitch shutout Saturday against his former club -- the slapstick Yankees show up instead to immediately flush any positive vibes.
"It doesn’t change the momentum," said Aaron Judge, speaking at Monday’s All-Star workout in Denver. "We still won that series. We definitely wanted to end the first half with a sweep, and we had every opportunity, especially going into the ninth up, 7-2. But even looking back throughout the game as hitters, we left quite a few guys on base, and I think that’s what cost us the game, no matter what happened in the ninth."
As Judge alluded to, the Yankees stranded 14 that afternoon (3-for-16 with runners in scoring position). Just one more hit in any of those spots, and this would have been a different conversation with Judge. But the Yankees’ season is littered with a ton of these "what if" scenarios, and they’re way past the point of moral victories, no matter how many times Boone praises his club’s "compete" after going belly-up.
In the Yankees’ chain of command, however, it’s Boone’s job to be the players’ buddy, and he’s tried his best to fulfill that role by using verbal gymnastics to explain away what amounts to colossal underachievement over the first 3 1/2 months. Higher up, Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman have been publicly critical of the team’s performance, but nothing concrete has been done to fix it so far, short of the July 1 swap for Tim Locastro, or Brett Gardner 2.0.
As the Yankees open the second half, there are still 15 days left before the trade deadline. But in reality, they’re operating in a much tighter time frame to salvage this season. Between now and then, not only do they have those eight against the Red Sox, but three with the second-place Rays, too. It would take an epic collapse over these next two weeks for the Yankees to become sellers, but after what’s happened so far, would anyone rule that out?
"That’s baseball -- you’re going to have your ups-and-downs, you’re going to have your crazy moments," Judge said. "But the past couple series, I feel like we’ve kind of turned the corner."
The Yankees can’t afford any more faceplants this month. Any more of those "crazy moments" against the Red Sox, and they could be fatal, as far as the AL East is concerned.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
