Through the dark clouds of doubt that have steadily moved toward the sky over Yankee Stadium, a ray of promise peek through this weekend in a series win over the Red Sox
For 52 hours, it appeared the Yankees were back out of their coma. For the last 20, the outlook has to returned to a bleak state. The Yankees took two games over the Red Sox, one in dramatic fashion and one in decisive fashion, before coming up empty against knuckleballer Steven Wright on Sunday. In the two victories, they managed to shake their RISP demons with a 5-for-21 effort, and on Sunday, they had bigger issues with just one man in scoring position all game.
What is either good, or bad, depending on how you’re feeling, is that the Yankees got contributions from unusual places in their wins. After a Brian McCann RBI single on Friday, Dustin Ackley and Aaron Hicks put New York over the top. Aside from Carlos Beltran’s two RBIs on Saturday, the Yankees’ runs were driven in by Hicks, Didi Gregorius and Austin Romine. This is either an encouraging trend, proving that the Yankees can win without home runs from their graying sluggers, or it’s a discouraging one, because it would be dangerous to put faith in the aforementioned role players to produce on a regular basis.
It’s only healthy to look at both sides. Sure Hicks, Ackley and Gregorius aren’t going to win the Yankees 70 more games, but they’re not going to remain in a slumber, either. The narrative with this offense has shifted from “they’re not a contact-oriented team and rely too much on homers” to “they can’t hit with runners in scoring position” to “they can’t hit.” All three of those takes have truth to them, but things could be looking up.
The Yankees could conjure up some — dare I say — momentum during this long 10-game stretch at their hitter-friendly Stadium. At the very least, putting some big numbers up on the board will improve the club ’s mental state from an offensive standpoint heading out west.
There’s been such a focus on hitting that the Yankees’ tumultuous pitching situation has gone somewhat un-noticed. Each starter, with the exception of the recently-injured CC Sabathia, has been an absolute wild card this season.
Yankee starts have been like those online captcha generators that prevent robots from making transactions. Some make perfect sense, others make your head hurt, and each and every one is impossible to read. Nathan Eovaldi carried a no-hitter through seven, then gave up six runs in five innings. Michael Pineda let seven men cross the plate, then yielded just five hits. Luis Severino didn’t make it out of the fourth inning, then held his own against a formidable Orioles lineup on the road.
And yet, each of these pitchers managed to piece together quality outings over the weekend. Pineda continued to struggle early (+10 ERA in the first inning this year) on Friday, but settled in and picked up a win. Eovaldi hit 100 mph 10 times and looked like a middle-to-top-end rotation guy. Severino battled in a loss on Sunday and paid a big price for the few errors he made.
For a weekend, the Yankees, down a few key players, looked like a major-league team that could prevent runs, and score them. It may mean nothing, or it may mean that the team is actually capable of scoring when McCann, Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez aren’t mashing homers, and holding teams at bay when their ace isn’t pitching.
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