The New York Yankees showed up at Fenway Park this week looking like a first-place team. They’re leaving looking like a team that can’t buy a hit.
Boston swept the first three games of the four-game series, and the Yankees have now lost six of their last eight. The Red Sox, who entered this series buried in last place in the AL East, suddenly look like the team with all the momentum. And the Yankees don’t have Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton to bail them out.
Cody Bellinger has been trying to hold things together, and he’s clearly frustrated. After Saturday’s 4-1 loss, he didn’t hide how he felt.
“With the way it’s going, we all expect to be better,” Bellinger told reporters. “They’ve been playing well. We got to show up tomorrow and take a game here.”
It sounds simple. It hasn’t been.
Rookie Arms Shut Down a Sputtering Lineup
Boston threw three rookie pitchers at the Yankees this weekend, and all three got the job done. Connelly Early and Payton Tolle handled Thursday and Friday. Then Jake Bennett took the ball Saturday and went 6.1 innings, allowing just three hits and one earned run. That’s not exactly what you’d expect from a Yankees lineup that’s supposed to wear down young pitchers.
New York managed just one run on Saturday. The bats went quiet at the worst possible time, and the division lead evaporated into a virtual tie with the Tampa Bay Rays. Tampa Bay actually holds a slight edge in win percentage at 47-33 compared to the Yankees’ 48-34 mark. That matters more than raw win totals at this point.
The Yankees still have the talent to turn this around. But they’re running out of excuses. Judge and Stanton being out hurts, sure, but this team was supposed to have enough depth to survive a couple weeks without them. Right now, it looks like they don’t.
Bellinger is right to call it what it is. They need to be better. The only question is whether that happens Sunday or sometime after the All-Star break.
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