If the New York Yankees were pleased with themselves after their shutout of the Indians on Friday night, they have to be at least equally embarrassed by the loss they suffered last night. In an ugly game with little Yankee hitting, the Yankees lost the second game 11-3 against the poor hitting Cleveland team. The Indians have only six other teams that hit less than they do.
Luis Gil’s secondary offerings didn’t cut it
Luis Gil has had some amazing starts for the Yankee’s while helping replace Cy Young Award winner Cory Kluber, but he has also had flashes of little control of his secondary pitches that have cost the Yankees. As manager Aaron Boone had said last night and before, Gil, although he may have a great future, right now he is not the finished product.
Gil started yesterday’s game great, striking out two in the first inning, but with his lack of control, the game was pretty much over by the time he was taken out of the game in the fifth inning. He had given up three runs and left two on base when he exited. Alber Abreu entered and couldn’t hold those remaining runners on base, allowing them to score and adding three runs of his own. At the close of the inning, it was 8-0 Yankees. The Yankees couldn’t recover from that deficit.
The offense came too little, too late
At the beginning of the seventh inning, the Yankees were scoreless, not able to do anything off Indian’s starter, Aaron Civale. But in the seventh inning, Giancarlo Stanton went deep off of Bryan Shaw for his 30th home run of the season. Luke Voit added a two-run homer of his own in the eight, but this was too little, too late to make any difference in the game’s outcome.
If the Yankees can reach the postseason, they have to correct a big problem they have had all season. And that was on full display yesterday. The Yankees can’t hit off of good pitching. They only beat up on poor pitchers and tired bullpens. In the postseason, you are only going to see great pitching that goes deep into games.
One thing the Yankees can do to improve that is to keep Giancarlo Stanton in the outfield daily; use Luke Voit, who may not be elite at first as the everyday DH; he is a better hitter with the potential of hitting more home runs than Anthony Rizzo, the better defender. They have got to play clean baseball and improve the consistency of their hitting.
Yankees slip out of the wild card yet again
The New York Yankees are in a very tight race to get a wild card spot with the Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays. For nearly two weeks, the Yankees held that number one spot giving them the home-field advantage in that game. But, since then, they have slipped entirely out of the wild card, then back in and out yet again.
Yesterday their rivals, the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays, both won their games. The Yankees lost and slipped back out of a wild card berth, looking in on their rivals. The last 13 games are so critical to the goal of playing in the wild card. It doesn’t appear that either of their rivals will be collapsing, so the Yankees must win at least the majority of the remaining games.
If they can’t do that, it will be a long cold winter of discontent spent examining all the things they could have done better instead of celebrating a long-awaited 28th World Championship.