While it’s only been a week, a lot has seemingly changed for the Yankees. After last Monday’s win 11-5 win over Tampa Bay, New York held a four game lead in the division and looked to be somewhat in control of things despite the injury to Masahiro Tanaka.
Since then, the Yankees have sputtered. New York lost five out of its last six games and failed to score more than two runs in each of those losses. The Yankees even suffered their first shutout loss of the season Sunday as Royals starter Edinson Volquez held them to just three hits in seven innings.
The offense has to take a lot of the blame for this rough stretch as it’s going to be very difficult to win games while scoring only two runs regardless of who’s pitching. While the run scoring output has changed for the Yankees in the last week, the offense is still being carried by four guys and dragged down by the rest. At the top of the order, Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner have been getting on base and Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira have been hitting for power. The rest of the offense has largely been a problem. Carlos Beltran has bounced back this month (.321/.339/.536) and Chase Headley leads the team in RBI in the last week and they’d have lost on Saturday without his three-run home run off Danny Duffy. Still, Brian McCann, Stephen Drew, and Didi Gregorius haven’t been hitting well. Chris Young is in a 1-for-14 slide. Those guys need to pick up the pace or this top heavy lineup will continue to crumble.
While the offense hasn’t been great, the starting rotation looks as vulnerable as ever right now. CC Sabathia was able to stop the bleeding on Saturday by beating the Royals and actually has the only two wins for the team in the last week. Still, one can see how a rotation with Adam Warren and Chris Capuano is problematic. That’s putting a lot of pressure on Sabathia and Nathan Eovaldi to pitch well every time out.
Even though Eovaldi was good in his last start against Tampa Bay, the offense didn’t provide him with a big lead and manager Joe Girardi arguably left him in the game too long. That’s baseball and sometimes nothing seems to be going right. The Yankees have just been a little off for the past week.
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