The New York Yankees don’t look like a playoff-caliber team at this point in time, despite featuring a 10-game lead in the AL East. The Bombers have lost eight of their last 10 games and have failed miserably to score runs. In fact, the Yankees haven’t scored a run in two games, losing 3–0 to the Boston Red Sox on Sunday and 4–0 to the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday night.
The Bombers have been wasting away great starting pitching performances, but Gerrit Cole spoke out after Monday’s game, indicating his team needs to step up and provide run support moving forward.
“We need a spark.”
The Yankees got a gem from Gerrit Cole:
Cole pitched 6.0 innings against Tampa in the loss, allowing five hits and one run, striking out six batters. Watching Aaron Hicks run around aimlessly in centerfield, missing what should’ve been an easy catch, and the batting order striking out 12 times was simply painful to watch.
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Things aren’t getting any easier for the Yanks, who still have two games against the Rays before hostng the Toronto Blue Jays in a four-game series and the New York Mets in a two-game series starting next Monday. Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom are both penciled in as the starters for those two games, so the Yankees desperately need to get their offense turned around if they want any chance of walking away victorious.
Luckily, a few players are getting healthier, notably Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton enjoyed live batting practice before Monday’s game and has worked his way back diligently from Achilles tendinitis. The expectation is that he could return by this upcoming weekend.
In addition, star infielder DJ LeMahieu has been dealing with a toe injury. He received imaging on Monday, diagnosing him with inflammation on his right big toe. He is considered day-to-day, which is a great piece of injury news given the fears of something more serious.
The Yankees will start Nestor Cortes on the mound Tuesday night against Jeffrey Springs, who hosts a 2.56 ERA this season over 84.1 innings pitched. This is another difficult game for the Yankees, who, at the very least, need to get some runs on the board to snap this embarrassing streak of hitting.