For the first time in nearly three weeks, the Yankees have fallen out of the top Wild Card spot.
A 13-game winning streak surged the Bombers into a playoff spot, but seemingly just as quickly, five straight losses and nine in their last 11 games have knocked the team into the second Wild Card spot, with just 1.5 games separating them and the surging Blue Jays from the final playoff spot.
Once again, as they had to many times in the first three months of the season, the Yankees were left to try and answer what is going wrong for a team whose offense is at full strength, but the results have disappeared in this recent stretch.
“We’re pouring into everything right now, whether it’s video, whether it’s pregame tweaks and things like that,” Aaron Boone said. “We know we have the guys capable, but we gotta get it done.”
The team hasn’t been getting it done with the bats at all of late, scoring three runs or less for the fourth time during this five-game losing streak in Wednesday night’s 6-3 loss. Brett Gardner’s three-run home run was the team’s only source of offense, which failed to erase a deficit in the later innings against a Toronto bullpen that has struggled this year.
It’s a narrative that the Yankees thought they had moved past after winning 13 in a row and seemingly finding the production they believed was there all year, but now, it’s back to trying to figure out how to ignite an offense that looks like a gauntlet on paper.
“It’s been a little bit of a broken record this week, I understand that,” Boone said. “This is the group we believe in, and we gotta get this thing turned around. We believe we will, but it’s certainly been a frustrating week for us on the offensive side.”
Boone told reporters that the Yankees can’t afford to fixate on the losing streak, but if the Bombers can’t figure out how to get back to their August ways, their leap into a playoff spot will be quickly erased.
“You gotta get past that and understand the importance of tomorrow,” Boone said. “As frustrating as it’s been now for the last 11 games, it’s still in our hands. We have to be able to get past this and trust that what we’re capable of doing is next. I can sit here and talk about it, but talk becomes cheap, and we have to go out and perform, and we’re not doing it at a high enough level right now.”
The Yanks’ recent slide is another example of a team that has been up and down for much of the season, going 12-14 in April, 17-11 in May and 12-14 again in June, and after going 21-8 in August, they have lost five of seven to begin September, with a playoff spot hanging in the balance.
“We try to model as much consistency as we can,” Boone said. “In 162 games, there’s gonna be peaks and valleys, but we’ve had more than our share of them. This is an 11-gamer that we have to dig ourselves out of.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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