Joe Girardi needs to call a team meeting.
Not the traditional clubhouse kind in which he and the team leaders offer inspiration or fury or some combination to try to launch the club.
Girardi should gather his position players at home plate Wednesday before the second game against the Blue Jays, and then walk them out to right field. Reintroduce them to what used to be called around here “The Short Right Field Porch,” but now plays for the home squad like a fence too far.
Maybe that noted power-hitter Brett Gardner could remind his teammates just how short the stroll actually was. Perhaps someone could break out a tape measure, in case the “314 FT” tucked just inside the foul pole is not blatant enough. Heck, someone could remind the assembled pinstriped humanity that the nickname of this team is supposed to be the Bronx Bombers, that the legend that is perpetually supposed to be honored is Babe Ruth, not Ruth Buzzi.
Because these Yankees have been unplugged, which might work in music, but not in baseball — particularly Yankees baseball, specifically when at home.
The Yankees actually won Tuesday 3-1 over Toronto because Masahiro Tanaka yielded a homer to Jose Reyes on the first pitch and no other runs. Toronto, his first AL opponent faced a second time, worked Tanaka hard, but he still whiffed 10 in six innings. Dellin Betances followed with two dominant frames and the Yanks beat Toronto for the 14th straight time at the Stadium.
And for accuracy’s sake, the big Yankee blow was indeed a homer — struck by Gardner. A two-run refresher course on where to aim because Gardner’s liner is a double or triple elsewhere, but cleared that so-close fence and struck the foul pole a couple of feet up.
But the Yankees did not spend a couple of hundred million dollars in the offseason to distance themselves from the offensive calamity of 2013 to have Gardner play the part of follow the muscle.
The Yankees hit five homers at the Stadium against the Pirates on May 17, what could have been seen as an ignition moment. But in the 10 home games since, they have managed six homers: two by Gardner, two by Yangervis Solarte and one each by Jacoby Ellsbury and Mark Teixeira. If anyone has actually seen Brian McCann, please notify the authorities — or the Yankees’ front office.
For $85 million, the Yankees sold McCann as owning the perfect swing for Yankee Stadium, and that would now only be true if the perfect swing produces grounder after grounder to the second baseman. As McCann conceded, “I need to start hitting. I need to start putting together better at-bats.”
The Yankees spent another $45 million on Carlos Beltran, who thought he could enhance his Hall of Fame candidacy by capitalizing on the porch’s proximity. But between injury and ineffectiveness, Beltran has fizzled.
The Yankees even felt Ellsbury, Brian Roberts and Kelly Johnson would have their power elevated by playing in The Bronx, like so many lefties before them. But not so much.
And because Tanaka does not pitch every day, either the Yankees find their power stroke or miss the playoffs. This was just the Yankees’ 30th home game, the fewest in the AL. They are 14-16 in a place in which they traditionally dominate if they are going to have a big season. But they are not dominating because you have to score at the Stadium to win. And this was the 17th time in those 30 games the Yankees have scored three or fewer runs. They have been out-homered 43-36 at home. The 43rd by a visitor came from Reyes. Batting lefty, he went into the short porch, and Girardi noted twice that from his days as a Met and Blue Jay, Reyes “is very familiar with this ballpark.”
But the Yankees should know it best. They moved into this version of the Stadium in 2009. They finished first or second in the majors in home-park dingers in each of the first four years and made the playoffs every time. They finished 19th last year and didn’t. They are seventh this year, but next-to-last in runs scored at home. If they can’t hit it out of the park, they can’t score enough to win here. And with the most home games in the AL remaining, they’d better remedy this problem.
“We absolutely have to hit more homers,” Teixeira said. “At this park, you have to score and we just are not scoring enough. If we don’t believe we are going to do that, we might as well pick up and go home because winning will be very hard unless at some point we drive balls and score runs.”
So maybe a reminder is needed, a stroll to that right-field wall, to show the shortest distance between two Yankees points — here and October — is a straight line over that fence.