You can blame the enigma that is Carlos Rodon, he of three lights-out innings before imploding in the fourth, all you want for the Yankees’ Game 2 loss, but the fact is, he had one bad inning and the bullpen was aces for five behind him.
To Boomer & Gio, it was the other side, where the Yanks had just five hits entering the ninth and squandered multiple opportunities, that bears the brunt of the loss.
“I know a winner when I see one, and they are a winner. I know that Yankee fans are frustrated because of what happened with Carlos Rodon yesterday, where he kind of lost it after the first two innings,” Boomer said. “Those things happen; he pitched much better this year than he did in previous years, and you would think that he’s gonna be a guy that's gonna at least get us through six innings – but they used eight pitchers last night.”
It reminded Boomer of the old idea Craig Carton once floated where instead of starters and relievers, teams should just have a dozen (now 13) pitchers who pitched one inning every game – it was “cockamamie” at the time, but as Gio noted ‘we’re getting close to that’ especially in the postseason, well…still gotta have the same nine hitters go through the lineup three or four times.
“The other frustrating part of it is, they held them to four runs, which in today's baseball is nothing,” Boomer said. “When you have guys like Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Juan Soto in your lineup, those guys should be able to generate a lot of runs. So now, the narrative is going to be, where are Judge and Soto? That’s basically what it's gonna come down to.”
And in crunch time, those stars simply need to show up.
“It is a true statement that for the Yankees, it always comes down to October, and this is where it matters the most. This is where the expectations lie, and this is where, if the players don't live up to the Derek Jeter-esque type of captaincy and leadership and championships, then the so-called legacy that a player leaves behind is going to be tainted, unless they have an October to remember,” Boomer said.
Judge, particularly, is 1-for-7 in this series and now a .208 hitter in 46 career postseason games – and if you take out the two Wild Card Games in 2017 and 2018 where he was 4-for-7 with two homers, four RBI, and five runs scored…yeah, it’s even worse, as he drops to .193 with 69 strikeouts in 171 at-bats.
“Aron Judge is the perfect player. He's a great Yankee, there's nothing negative you could say about him, but when you are the Captain of the Yankees and you're Monument Park guy – and he is headed in that direction – you cannot have these postseasons,” Gio said. “I don't think the fan base has completely turned on him, and they shouldn’t, but they’re definitely concerned. It just doesn’t make any sense that this happens every single year! I mean, this guy, you can't get him out for six months until you get to number 10 on the calendar, and then you can get him out?”