Pinstripe Progress Report: Yankees blow an easy week

 

Welcome back to the Pinstripe Progress Report.  We wrote last week how the Yankees had to go at least 5-1, and ideally 6-0 against the White Sox and Marlins as they had a tough task ahead of them with the Braves and Red Sox looming this week.  Well, the Yankees took on this task and pretty much rolled over and died, dropping both series 1-2 and capped off the week of painful baseball by blowing a 4-run 9th-inning lead against the Marlins.  Let's start off with players who were positives for this team before getting down to the biggest disappointments.

Pinstripe's Positives:

Gerrit Cole:  Cole did not have his best stuff in either of his outings this week but still managed to give the Yankees an opportunity to win the game.  Against the White Sox Cole went 7 strong innings of 2 run ball before giving up back-to-back leadoff singles, that Tommy Kahnle (more on him later) allowed to score bring his run total up to 4 for the game.  On Sunday, Cole then battled through a questionable strike zone and pesky Marlins hitters to throw 6 innings of 2 run ball.  Cole keeps showing he's worth every penny this year, but unfortunately for him, the Yankees have forgotten how to win baseball games. In 9 games that he's started that the Yankees have lost, Cole has a 2.78 ERA per Big Baby David of Jomboy Media on Twitter.

Aaron Judge:  We labeled Aaron Judge as a disappointment last week because he was expanding the Zone and continued his struggles against the Astros.  That was not the case this week as he went 6/19 for a .316 batting average with two home runs.  Judge also took the walks when they were there, walking 9 times in the 6 games.  There's still no reason for opposing pitchers to pitch to Judge so he's going to have to play a boring brand of baseball, taking the walks that are going to come and punishing mistake pitches like he did this past week.

Pinstripe Disappointments:

There are a lot of options for this one but we're going to limit ourselves to the three biggest culprits.  Some honorable mentions are Giancarlo Stanton (Struggling to hit .200), Holmes (Sunday collapse), Bauers (defense and baserunning miscues and the bat is starting to slump), and Severino (still not a major league pitcher). 

Now that that's out of the way let's go over the three biggest disappointments in no particular order, starting with one of Cashman's key offseason signings.

Tommy Kahnle:  Kahnle's stats from a distance look very good this week.  He pitched 2.0 innings this past week and allowed 0 ER. However, as is usually the case with reliever stats, this does not nearly tell the full story.  On Monday, Kahnle relieved ace Gerrit Cole after he allowed two singles to lead off the eighth.  Kahnle allowed these runs to score, giving the White Sox a 4-1 lead in the bottom of the eighth.  On Sunday, Kahnle came in to try to bail out Clay Holmes and proceeded to walk the first hitter he faced before giving up a walk-off single to allow the Marlins to complete the comeback.  Overall this season, Kahnle has entered the game with inherited runners four times and has allowed 7 of 8 inherited runners to score per Katie Sharpe.  At this point, Kahnle can only be trusted coming into a clean inning, and can't be relied on when there are runners on the base.

Gleyber Torres: Torres was hot to start August but cooled off this past week, going 6/24 with only 1 extra-base hit. Additionally, Torres continued to make inexplicable mistakes on the base paths running into an out Friday night on a ground ball hit in front of him.  Torres has been the Yankees' most consistent hitter this year, but someone whose protecting Aaron Judge has to do more damage at the plate and after Friday, he has now run into 7 outs on the base paths this season per Kate Sharpe.

Aaron Boone:  We've talked, and constantly tweet that there's only so much the manager can do to impact the baseball game.  They set the lineups and make bullpen decisions, sometimes call plays and set the defense, but at the end of the day, the players on the field have to execute.  Boone can't go out there and throw nine innings of shutout baseball or hit the ball for his players.  What Boone can do, is hold the team accountable for mental errors.  For a team struggling to score runs, they need to control what they can control which is baserunning errors and converting the routine plays.  Too many times this week a player got picked off for no reason or ran on a ball in front of them (as mentioned above).  Boone needs to stop saying "It's right in front of us" and defending his players when they aren't meeting the bare minimum expectations.  He needs to start sending a message to the team that these miscues aren't acceptable, and benching players to hold them accountable and elevate their play.  

Another reason that Boone is on this part of the report, is that he's still making questionable decisions that negatively impact the team.  We mentioned Kahnle's struggles when he doesn't come into a clean inning above, yet Boone still decided he was the best option to bail out Holmes.  Severino isn't a viable pitching option, yet Boone pulls Ian Hamilton after a strong, 10-pitch first inning for Severino (who immediately gives up multiple runs) because he claims that Severino's problem is the first inning of games (anybody can tell you it is not, and I don't believe Boone genuinely believes this but he acts like he does).  The last highly questionable decision, that David Cone and Michael Kay relentlessly brought up on the broadcast, was not intentionally walking Jake Burger with a base open and one out in the ninth inning Sunday. Burger is the Marlins' hottest hitter right now and killed the Yankees all weekend. If Boone walked Burger, it also would've set up a force out at every base and the Yankees could've turned a double play to force extra innings.  Boone was burned for this earlier in July when he didn't walk Shohei Ohtani late in a game against the Angels.  Until Boone learns from his mistakes and starts holding players accountable, there will be plenty more painful losses like this one.

Looking Forward:

The Yankees have an extremely tough week ahead of them.  As of writing this, the Yankees dropped the first game against the Braves 9-2 with Severino pitching tonight.  There is a realistic chance the Braves are up by double-digit runs by the third inning given how Sevy's recent starts have gone. The Yankees' task gets no easier on Wednesday when they face Charlie Morton and his high spin rate.  Morton is the type of pitcher that gives this lineup issues and the Yankees are realistically looking at a sweep.  

After the Braves series, the Yankees travel back home to play a three-game series against the Red Sox.  If they want any hope of catching the Red Sox they honestly need to sweep them, but realistically they'd be lucky to win two of the three games the way the Yankees have been playing.