After another maddening loss to an inferior team, the Yankees stumble towards Tampa with their once cozy division lead now down to six games.
Domingo German, Clarke Schmidt, and Frankie Montas will now be tasked with trying to prevent a nightmare scenario where the Yanks come away from the Trop with their AL East lead, once at 15 games shortly before the All-Star break, down to a razor-thin three games.
“If history tells us anything, probably some tight ballgames,” Gerrit Cole said of the upcoming series. “Lot a different pitchers we’ll have to see from the other side…we’ll have to grind some at-bats and just try to score more than they do.
“I think our job is to focus on the next game, really. We’re still in a good spot and we’ve got another month of opportunities to continue to try to get better.”
Wednesday night’s loss closes the book on a month of August where the Yanks finished with a lowly 10-18 record, and watched their division lead devolve from a sure thing to a looming possibility that an epic collapse could be in the cards.
“Brutal,” Isiah Kiner-Falefa said about the team’s rough August. “I think all of us in here are not happy about the last month, but it’s a long season and hopefully we can rebound from it. Might be a wake-up call for us.
“But we’re not happy about last month. We’re just happy to turn the page.”
The Yanks will have to immediately turn that page as the calendar flips to September, the final full month of the regular season. A massive series awaits right away, and a chance to either right the ship and build back that division cushion, or watch it dwindle down to red-alert levels.
“I think it all comes down to how we answer,” Kiner-Falefa said. “At this point, we just gotta play better and flip the page. Hopefully this next month we can take momentum into the postseason and protect our lead.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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