If there had been a month of monsoons, the 1948 Boston Braves just might have been able to get by after all with just [Warren] Spahn and [Johnny] Sain in the rotation.
But it could rain for 40 days and 40 nights and the other seven batters in the Yankees order not named Aaron Judge and Juan Soto will still have to take their turns at the plate.
It is the quiet stuff folks say out loud that always cuts the deepest. It is the grain of truth in every joke that always strikes home with cruelty.
We’re talking here about the Yankees’ shallow two-man batting order following Sunday’s symptomatic 6-4 defeat to the Rays in The Bronx.
But we are surely also talking about what Luis Severino said about his former team’s offensive capabilities at the end of last week when it became known that the Mets right-hander would miss this week’s two-game installment of the Subway Series as he had missed the opening two-game salvo in Queens the final week of June.
He said he’d been kind of joking when teased in a group chat by his former teammates, said he didn’t really mean it when he said, “I’m not afraid of those guys … right now, you only have two good hitters.”
The thing is, nobody’s laughing, certainly not the Yankees after they played just about the last month on a loop in this defeat to Tampa Bay in which Judge and Soto collaborated for all four RBIs in a game their team had 15 base runners but came up empty other than when Nos. 22 and 99 were at the plate.
They loaded the bases with one out in both the first and second innings and did not score. Nine of the 18 batters Tampa Bay starter Shane Baz faced reached base and none scored. The Yankees did not score until Judge crushed his 35th home run with two on and one out in the seventh to cut the margin to 5-3. They scored again when Soto doubled in a run with one out in the ninth to bring up Judge as the tying run.
Alack and alas, Judge flied to center before cleanup-hitter Austin Wells — let that roll around your tongue for a bit — struck out to end the game to leave the Yankees with their 15th defeat in their last 22 games.
Baseball is a playoff sport now, so the standings are all about being in a postseason spot, which the Yankees most certainly are, but no two-man batting order has ever won a championship. Even Eddie Feigner needed four players for his King and the Court softball outfit.
“I think we’re trying to do too much in situations,” Judge said. “We’ve got some work to do.”
Ben Rice led off on Sunday while Wells batted cleanup. It’s not just that these players, among many, might be trying to do too much, they are being asked for too much. Rice as a leadoff hitter? Wells batting cleanup?
Yes, DJ LeMahieu, benched for the second time in the last four games, may be facing a Requiem for His Career. He was going to be the leadoff man. He is slashing .177/.270/.202/.472 and is 0-for17 his last six games. And yes, Giancarlo Stanton is still working his way back from a leg issue.
Still — or maybe because — the Yankees are 13th in OPS at the leadoff position in the 15-team AL, with Rice 4-for-his-last 39. The Yankees are also last in the league in OPS and 14th in slugging coming out of the cleanup position.
This isn’t on Wells, who debuted on Saturday in the cleanup spot as the seventh Yankee to hit in this position, going 1-for-7 for the weekend while striking out to end the game with Soto as the potential tying run on second.
It’s July, these are the Yankees, and you don’t necessarily expect Austin Wells to be batting fourth. Of course, you didn’t necessarily expect Anthony Rizzo to slash .223/.289/.341 with eight homers before going on the IL just over two months ago. This was a case of injury being added to insult at the plate.
The Yankees are sure that this can’t go on forever, they say it with their mouths but then you use your eyes to watch Alex Verdugo with another 0-for-4 to extend his misery index to 2-for-33 over the last eight games and you wonder.
There are two exceptions to the rule, they hit 2 and 3 in the order and the wonder is that any opposing manager would even pitch to Soto or Judge with a base — any base — open. Kevin Cash did that in Sunday’s late innings and was spanked.
“This game is hard for us right now. We have to find a way,” said manager Aaron Boone, who was none too pleased when Severino’s quotes were relayed to him. “We know we’re better than this.”
We’ll see.
