After Monday’s series-opening loss to the Rays, the Yankees’ once potent offense has hit a new low.
That new low, which was reached after Monday’s 3-1 loss, the team’s fourth defeat in a row, can be found at the bottom of the league’s run-scoring leaderboard, where you will find the Bronx Bombers, clearly undeserving of the nickname as they sit tied for 26th in all of Major League Baseball with 3.74 runs per game.
The team the Yanks are tied with? The lowly division rival Orioles, who have lost 14 straight games. And the only teams worse? Pittsburgh and Detroit, the only other two teams to be held to two runs or less more times than the Bombers, and the Mets, who are in first place in the NL East.
As the losses and frustrations accumulate, the Yanks are forced to continue their search for answers as to why their typically overwhelming lineup has failed to hit to its normal standard.
“We’re just gonna keep pouring into game plans and where we can make subtle adjustments in individuals and things we’re looking for and searching for, and we’ll keep looking at it,” manager Aaron Boone said after Monday’s loss.
All four of the Yankees’ losses since Friday, which included three to a terrible Tigers team, have seen the offense manage two runs or less. On Monday, the entirety of the offense was an opposite field home run by Miguel Andujar, who raised his OPS+ to just 55 after Monday’s performance. The Yanks currently only have four players about the league-average threshold of a 100 OPS+ in Aaron Judge (168), Giancarlo Stanton (130), Kyle Higashioka (110) and Gary Sanchez (102). Such an uncharacteristic struggle has left Boone searching for ways to get his group back to the prolific offense it had been since he took over prior to the 2018 season.
“Control the strike zone and do damage when you get a pitch that’s a mistake or your pitch to do damage with,” Boone said. “That’s the identity we’ve got to get back to having. That’s what these guys have been so good at over the last several years, is that pass-the-baton, make the pitcher work. When you get done with us in a series, even if you’ve had success on a given day or a series when a guy has pitched really well, we want you to feel like it was heavy, it was difficult, it was a lot to get through us. That hasn’t been the case enough, and that’s what we have to get back to as a group.”
For that to happen, the Yankees will need to see improvements from a number of players who have seen their offense dip significantly from last season. Clint Frazier, after earning the starting job in left field after posting an OPS above .900 last year, currently holds an OPS of .600. Brett Gardner’s is even worse at .523, while Gio Urshela, who posted an OPS above .850 in each of his first two seasons with the Yanks, holds an OPS of .705 this season.
But one of the most concerning slides has been from DJ LeMahieu, who is batting just .262 after winning the batting title in 2020 with a batting average of .364. LeMahieu had just three extra base hits in May and had an OPS of just .657 for the month. One of the most steady bats in the lineup has been shaky for most of the season, which highlights the team’s biggest problem: the bats that are typically relied upon the most, outside of Judge, aren’t showing up.
The Yanks are now 5.5 games out of first after knocking on the door just a week ago. But another offensive swoon has dropped them back, and they’ll have to get back to being the Bronx Bombers before the deficit becomes too much to overcome. How can the Yanks do that? By getting back to what worked for the last three years.
“Making sure we’re not taking it all upon ourselves, but going out there and grinding out a really tough at-bat,” Boone said. “If we can do that, and with the guys we have in there that are capable, that should start to work.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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