If the Yankees’ ship is sinking, manager Aaron Boone is going down with it.
The skipper continued to cling to any shred of optimism despite his Bronx Bombers’ struggles, which have most recently featured three straight series losses, a sweep by the Miami Marlins, and a rubber-game loss to the Houston Astros in which they were dominated by veteran journeyman Jason Alexander.
Entering Monday night’s series opener against the Minnesota Twins, the Yankees were 6.5 games out of first place in the American League East and clinging on to the third and final American League Wild Card spot by a half-game over the red-hot Cleveland Guardians.
“The game is littered with dead and buried teams,” Boone said following their 7-1 loss to Houston on Sunday. “We’re in a playoff position right now, and we’ve been through a bad two months where we haven’t performed at a level we need to. But look at last year, go back to the year before, year before. You can pick out a number of teams that are sitting in a worse position than we are right now that go on that run. We have the people to do that. No doubt in my mind. But just sitting here, it’s talk right now, and we haven’t been good enough the last two months.”
That is probably an understatement. The Yankees are 20-30 in their last 50 games, which ranks fourth-worst in Major League Baseball during that span, where for every leak plugged, a new one seemingly emerges.
Max Fried continues to struggle during the second half of the season, as he has a 4.50 ERA in his last 13 starts after posting a 1.29 ERA in his first 11 outings of the campaign.
The bullpen, which received reinforcements at the trade deadline in the form of Camilo Doval, Jake Bird, and David Bednar, continues to falter. Not only was Bird optioned to Triple-A, but Devin Williams’ repeated late-inning implosions have derailed the Yankees at every turn.
The bats have been less than inspiring, too. And Aaron Judge’s 10-game IL absence is not a blanket excuse to drape over it. New York is scoring at a tick over the league average during this down stretch.
“It’s tough, but there’s no excuses,” Judge said. “We’ve got to go out there and perform at our best, go out there and win baseball games. Fans are still packing out and showing support for us, and we’ve got to show out for them and just go out there and do our job. We’re not doing the little things to put ourselves in a good position to go out there and win baseball games.”
Like their crosstown rivals in Queens, who have played even worse over their last 50 games, Boone continues to implore that things are going to turn around.
“I wholeheartedly believe we are going to get rolling and turn this thing around,” he said. “When it does, you start to really build that next level of confidence where guys are kind of feeding off each other. It’s all just talk right now, but that’s how I feel about it. We’ve got to go do it.”
