For two months, you’ve heard the same thing from the Yankees; it’ll turn around and everything is right in front of them.
It’s not a bad mentality to have, you can’t quit on your season in August while you hold a playoff spot and expect to have success, but it’s a message that falls on deaf ears when you’ve yet to show any signs of life.
After winning three-straight and making some key additions at the deadline, the team has gone an astonishing 0-4 including two of their worst losses on the season.
Mistakes continue to haunt the Yankees, pitchers continue to hand opposing hitters a free pass when the team has a comfortable lead, and the entire team is pressing at a rate that no one can seem to fix.
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It’s Put Up Or Shut Up Time For a Yankees’ Team Who Has Played Hideous Baseball
Entering the bottom of the second inning, the Yankees held a 3-0 lead, but Max Fried made two inconceivable mistakes with that lead that aided the Rangers.
A walk to bring the tying run to the plate and a bases-loaded pickoff move that was fired into centerfield were the difference between winning and losing this game.
On Friday the Yankees’ collapse started with Carlos Rodon walking five batters, as the team’s two frontline starters failed to lock things down and pitch a clean game.
These are the mistakes that a team simply cannot have, if you have a lead and you walk the tying run to the plate or walk people with a 6-0 lead, the opponent gets new life without having to do much work.
New York has the fifth-highest walk rate in baseball with a middle-of-the-pack HR/9 rate, they put runners on for free and don’t avoid damage contact at a high-enough rate to be worth it.
Pitchers on this team need to go after batters when they have a lead, it’s an unacceptable trend in the last few weeks that have set them up to lose over and over again.
When the pitchers do perform, they often have to work around a brutal defensive showing, as the Yankees have subjected their fans to some brutal glove work.
Anthony Volpe’s defensive regression has cost this team games, and others have joined in the infuriating display of bad defense over the past few weeks.
The Yankees lead baseball in unearned runs since the start of July (16), and considering the margin of losses in some of these games has been small, even shaving a couple of runs off of that total could result in one or two extra wins.
It’s a continuing trend, and every game you watch the team make a mistake on the field that creates a much-needed conversation around their preparation.
Jazz Chisholm admitted that himself and others on the team are pressing, and you see it in their play when they rush defensive reps, get caught sleeping on the bases, or have some brutally bad at-bats in big moments.
So how do you fix it?
I’d remove Devin Williams from the closer role, his play has been more bad than good this season and we can’t keep trying to hope it turns around.
His strikeout rate and barrel rate are noticably worse than last season, and you can slot either Camilo Doval or David Bednar into that role instead.
Outside of that? Guys need to step up.
If this team cannot clean up its play it will miss the postseason, and if they do, the jobs of multiple people inside the organization will be at risk.
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