You know the New York Yankees have given up when reserve catcher Erik Kratz is on the mound pitching. Kratz made an appearance in the eighth inning, allowing one earned run and one hit. The Yankees fell 14-1 to the Toronto Blue Jays, which marks two losses after clinching a playoff berth earlier this week.
With the postseason right around the corner, the Yankees need to pick up their bats and begin stringing together some positive performances. Coming off a 10-game win streak, the past few days for the Yankees have been tumultuous.
Starter Masahiro Tanaka lasted just four innings on Wednesday evening, allowing eight hits and three earned runs. He also walked three batters and struck out five. Finishing his regular season with a 3.56 ERA, we have seen Tanaka step up his game in the playoffs before, but I’m sure he would’ve preferred to end things on a higher note.
Good news and bad news for the New York Yankees:
GOOD NEWS:
There wasn’t much good from the blowout loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday. The only positive performance came from DJ LeMahieu, who always manages to put together consistent games. He had two hits on the night, currently enjoying a .360 batting average and a .596 slugging percentage. Other than DJ, only Luke Voit and Gio Urshela managed to secure hits. The Yanks struck out eight times, while the Blue Jays logged 16 hits on the evening.
BAD NEWS:
If allowing 14 runs wasn’t enough for you, the Yankees have allowed at least 11 runs in four games this season, with three of the four games coming against the Blue Jays in Buffalo. As stated before, when Kratz is on the mound, you can pretty much assume the Yankees have given up. He is the first Yankee position player to pitch twice in the season since Rick Cerone in 1987.
In addition to their poor performance, the Yankees left the bases loaded with nobody out early on, which was extremely disappointing and attested to their poor offensive showing. As for the pitching, there weren’t many positives to extract, as Tanaka allowed three walks over 20 batters faced. In his previous six games, he had only walked two over 126 batters. Clearly, there was something off with the Japanese native pitcher, so we can cough this one up as an anomaly.