Keidel: Yankees Are Embarrassing The Brand -- With No Help In Sight
By Jason Keidel
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The Yankees can't hit or pitch. Other than that, they look like eternal contenders.
Hardly living up to their muscular handle, the 8-15 Bronx Bombers read like baseball carrion.
Out of 30 MLB teams, the Yankees are 27th in runs scored, 27th in RBI, 29th in hits, 30th in doubles, 23rd in batting average, 23rd in on-base percentage, and 25th in OPS.
So maybe the Bronx isn't burning, but the Bombers are clearly bombing.
According to a piece in the New York Post, the Yankees hadn't scored more than three runs in an inning since the fourth game of the season (April 8) before plating three in two separate innings on Sunday night. Yet they were swept by the Red Sox anyway because of their suddenly leaky bullpen.
Dellin Betances, who was being hailed as the next Mariano Rivera, has surrendered home runs in his last three appearances. Surely he will turn this around, but it speaks to the abject incompetence that has infected the dugout.
But maybe if they can't hit they're wasting sublime pitching.
Nope.
The Yanks are 24th in ERA, 23rd in batting average against, 20th in runs allowed, and 19th in saves.
The Yankees were relying on some of their blessed arms to finally flower. But the pitching firm of Eovaldi, Pineda & Severino has, well, stunk. Masahiro Tanaka is the only starter with an ERA under 3.00. Or 4.00. Or even 5.00, for that matter.
The good news is the calendar just flipped from April to May, so there's an eternity to turn this around. But how? Worse than the numbers is the solemn sense that these Yankees are the real Yankees.
What studs are racing to get here? The concern over the 2016 iteration is it's an old, injury-addled club that doesn't have enough young talent to bull through six months of grueling baseball. So if the Yanks are tanking already, how will it get better?
The masthead still reads the same: Alex Rodriguez. Mark Teixeira. Carlos Beltran. Jacoby Ellsbury. Old, old, old, and brittle. A-Rod is good for a big game -- once a week. Tex is batting .225. And while he's a notoriously slow starter, he also just turned 36. Beltran is the best of the group, with a .250 BA and a whopping four homers. (He also leads the lineup in strikeouts.)
Pundits are already wondering how the Yanks can ship Ellsbury, who is just in Year 3 of that disastrous, seven-year deal, to anyone who will take him. Some folks wonder why the Fenway faithful still boo Ellsbury. Indeed, not only did he help Boston win two titles, he has formed a financial anvil around the Yankees' neck. If anything, they should throw a parade for the diminished outfielder.
Manager Joe Girardi talks in baseball platitudes, because he has to. He believes in the grind, that putting one foot in front of the other will yield the old results. But this isn't the old club. For nearly 20 years, we've had some comfort in the fact that the Yankees always had the horses. It was just a matter of when they'd hit their stride.
For the nearly 1 million Comcast customers who can't get the YES Network, perhaps you should consider it an accidental blessing. For watching the this team is about as fun as reruns of the A-Team.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
