The New York Yankees have hit a wall. And Gerrit Cole isn’t pretending otherwise.
After the Tampa Bay Rays took the series with a 3-0 win on Wednesday night, Cole stood at the postgame podium and basically said what everyone in the building already knew. This team isn’t playing like a contender right now.
“Just looking at the outcomes, it’s not where we want to be, and it’s not good enough to compete for first place right now,” Cole told reporters, per Greg Joyce of the New York Post.
Cole went six and a third innings, giving up seven hits and three runs. That’s a solid outing by most standards. But the Yankees offense didn’t score a single run to back him up. They managed just six hits all night. Every single one of them was a single.
That’s been the story for weeks now. The lineup that looked unstoppable back in June has gone completely quiet. At one point, New York held a four-game lead in the AL East. Now they’re in second place, staring up at the Rays, and clinging to the top wild card spot at 50-42.
The offense is in a full-blown slump
This isn’t just a bad week. It’s a sustained collapse. In the first two games of the series, the Yankees struck out 17 times. On Wednesday, they fanned another 11 times. That’s 28 strikeouts in three games against a division rival, with almost no power to show for it.
Infielder Jose Caballero admitted the frustration is seeping in.
“You can feel it,” Caballero said. “Personally, I think it’s us thinking about the bad stretch and taking it heavy on ourselves. I can speak for myself, I don’t like knowing that the last seven to 10 games, I’m doing bad. You think about it too long and it doesn’t get easier if you continue thinking about it. For me, we should just keep it simple and trust the room. We know how good we can be and we know how good we are.”
The numbers back up the misery. Paul Goldschmidt is 0-for-18 this month with 11 strikeouts. Austin Wells is 1-for-14. The only hitter batting over .300 in July is rookie Ben Rice, who’s slashing .320 with three home runs and six RBIs. That’s not exactly a supporting cast that strikes fear into opposing pitchers.
What happens next?
The Yankees finish the series with Tampa Bay on Thursday afternoon. A win would at least stop the bleeding, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problems. The lineup is pressing. The strikeouts are piling up. And the margin for error in the AL East is shrinking every day.
Cole threw his pitch, but the offense isn’t backing him up. That’s not a one-night problem. It’s a pattern. And until the bats wake up, the Yankees are just a team with good pitching and a whole lot of frustration.
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