Last month, the Yankees were making history in the form of a 13-game winning streak, but just weeks later, they are now putting up historically bad offensive performances.
Another lifeless night at the plate led to a 5-1 loss to the Blue Jays, and marked the second straight day that the team didn’t record a walk or an extra-base hit, the first time a Yankee team has failed to do either in back-to-back games since 1962.
It has only happened four times in franchise history.
“We just haven’t been playing good baseball this last week or so,” Brett Gardner said. “It’s been hard to get things going. We’re not doing a great job picking each other up and are throwing away at-bats from time to time.”
The Yankees were in danger of being no-hit by the lowly Orioles on Saturday, and have continued to slip into another offensive funk, like the one earlier in the season that set the team back considerably in the playoff race. In losing eight of their last 10 games, the Yanks have scored four or more runs in just two of them, and are now staring at a four-game losing streak for the second time in less than two weeks, as the bats continue to struggle to click in unison.
“It’s something you just gotta flush and get back in the saddle tomorrow and keep working,” Anthony Rizzo said. “There’s really no other way to put it.
“This group is too powerful, one through nine, at all times to hang our heads too much.”
The Yanks haven’t showed that power of late, struggling on Tuesday night against Toronto lefty Steven Matz, who the team enjoyed plenty of success against over the rest of Matz’s career. But the offense has fallen off considerably of late after scoring five or more runs in eight straight games to finish off its 13-game winning streak last month.
Now leading the top Wild Card spot by just a half game, the bats better come alive again quickly to avoid a potential road trip in a do-or-die playoff game.
“The bottom line is, we gotta be better,” Aaron Boone said. “We got our guys now, and if we’re gonna be the team we hope to be, the offense has to carry that freight for us. We gotta get it rolling.
“Guys are frustrated with that, and understand that we need to get a jump start in a big kind of way.”
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