Not only was the Yankees’ latest loss another candidate for worst of the season, it was another all-out implosion from a depleted bullpen that looked like the best in baseball earlier in the season.
Chad Green, not far removed from his collapse against the Astros just before the All-Star break, was one out away from securing a huge victory on Thursday night before surrendering a game-tying double to Kike Hernandez. Brooks Kriske came on in the 10th and collapsed in historic fashion, throwing four wild pitches to tie a major league record and give the Red Sox a walk-off win.
“You’re grinding right along with him,” Aaron Boone said of Kriske. “You know he has the swing and miss stuff to get out of it. He get sa big strikeout of Martinez, so he’s capable, when he’s around the zone with his fastball/split, of stranding a runner at third there.”
Of course, Kriske wouldn’t have been needed if Green got the job done, but instead, he blew his second straight save opportunity on a night where Aroldis Chapman was unavailable after he had thrown back-to-back nights against the Phillies.
“I think more with Chad, trying to protect him a little bit with some of his usage. We leaned on him so heavily in the first half and the back end of the first half in multi-inning situations,” Boone said. “That’s why I’ve tried as best I could lately to pick some spots to have him down. I actually thought he threw the ball well tonight and he was crisp, but they put some really good swings on him.
“I thought he was sharper tonight than say in Houston when he was struggling to find it out there. I didn’t think that was the case tonight. I just thought they put a few really good swings on him to square him up.”
Green may have looked sharp in Boone’s eyes, but the results didn’t translate, and they haven’t for the bullpen as a whole of late. Chapman is slowly morphing back into form after a dreadful stretch where he completely lost his command, but is still not back to his early-season self. Green has been strong for much of the season, but has saved his uncharacteristic implosions for the worst possible times. Zack Britton is still trying to find his way after coming back from the IL, while Jonathan Loaisiga, Wandy Peralta and Nestor Cortes Jr. are all on the COVID list. And Darren O’Day was lost for the season due to hamstring surgery.
The bullpen is depleted, but the arms that remain still need to do better if the Yankees are to continue to stay in the fight for a playoff spot.
“Part of that is when you have guys absent, everyone kind of protects each other a little bit,” Boone said. “That’s why you’ve got to lean on an entire bullpen to get outs in big spots. When guys are missing, you’ve got to rely a little heavier and that’s when guys can become vulnerable. But we gotta keep at it and keep grinding, and we have the people down there to close these things out.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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