DENVER — The Yankees have insisted that they’re a championship-caliber team all season. But actions speak far louder than words, and the former has made the latter hard to believe when it comes to this team.
On Sunday, the Yankees accentuated that point when they lost an 8-7 game — and a series — to the 36-win Rockies, the worst team in the National League. Afterward, Aaron Boone dismissed a question about falling to such a bad team as he was also reminded of his organization’s championship quality claims.
“It’s baseball. Major League Baseball. Save it with that question,” Boone said. “We got two and a half months to put ourselves in a position to be championship-caliber. We got to go. It’s on us. We got to go prove that. As far as who we’re playing – Major League Baseball. You’re going to beat some good teams. You’re gonna lose some series to teams that are struggling. It’s a grind every time you go out there and put a Major League Baseball uniform on. I don’t buy into that garbage at all. They outlasted us today. We’re obviously pissed off in the moment that we lost a series, but it’s a series we lost, and we got to move on from it and go try and play well in California.”
The reality is that the Rockies played ugly baseball all weekend, and the Yankees went toe to toe with them in that regard. On Sunday, that included multiple outs on the bases for the Yankees, three late home runs surrendered to the Rockies, and five lead changes over 11 innings.
According to Elias Sports, it was the first time the Yankees ever lost a game in which they had multiple leads of two-or-more runs in the eighth inning or later.
The game should have never come to that, but the Yankees spent five innings failing to score off Chase Anderson, who entered the game with a 6.89 ERA this season and an 18.23 mark over his last four starts. On Friday, Austin Gomber held them to two runs despite entering the game with a 6.40 ERA. While the Yankees teed off against Connor Seabold on Saturday, Colorado’s bullpen silenced the lineup for 6.2 innings.
The Rockies, collectively, have the worst pitching staff in the N.L.
Don’t get it wrong: the Yankees are not nearly as bad as Colorado. But they’re now back in the basement of the American League East. They have the same record as the Red Sox, but Boston owns the tiebreaker despite spending most of the season in last.
That’s partly because the Yankees have failed to capitalize against last-place and sub-.500 teams. Since June 6, the Yankees have gone 1-2 against the White Sox, 1-5 against the Red Sox, 1-2 against the Mets, 2-1 against the A’s, 1-2 against the Cardinals, 1-2 against the Cubs, and 1-2 against the Rockies.
For those keeping count, that’s one winning set across eight series against cellar-dwellers and/or teams without a winning record. Teams with serious championship aspirations usually find ways to win more of those matchups, even when times are tough.
The Yankees will have another crack at a mediocre opponent when they open a three-game series against the Angels in Anaheim on Monday.
“It’s what we do for a living,” the struggling Anthony Rizzo said when asked about putting the Rockies series in the rearview. “If we just want to put our heads down and feel bad for ourselves, that’s never a key for success. So we’ll get on a plane, we’ll talk amongst each other, and it’s all good stuff, and we’ll get ready for Anaheim.”
In fairness to the Yankees, injuries have decimated their roster all season, and every team in the AL East has at least 50 wins.
“Look, I mean, this is a tough league,” said Gerrit Cole, who pitched extremely well on Sunday. “And it’s a really tough division. Don’t forget to mention that, that every team is maybe five, six, seven games over .500 at the very least. So I mean there’s a lot of tough baseball out there. And when you’re sitting there looking at the situation, as a player, you just gotta get back to grinding the axe. Get in there and do your work and try to get better every single day. I mean, there’s a lot of baseball to play in front of us and there’s a lot of good things that could potentially happen.”
Despite the poor play and factors working against them, the Yankees are still within striking distance of the third wild card. But even striving for that last spot is an indictment on the legitimacy of this team’s championship hopes — or at least a departure from the franchise’s World Series-or-bust mantra — even if crazy things can happen once a team sneaks into the playoffs.
The Yankees look like a team more designed to do that — sneak in — than one built to win it all. Hal Steinbrenner said there was more to be done after re-signing Aaron Judge and adding Carlos Rodón in the offseason, but Brian Cashman never made any additional splashes. As a result, Boone has had to operate a poorly constructed roster with gaping holes in left field and third base, among other concerns.
Those were problems the Yankees knew about before the season began. It’s now mid-July, and they haven’t been addressed in a meaningful way. Perhaps the Yankees add some reinforcements before the upcoming trade deadline and go on a run, but there’s also a chance they will have dug too big of a hole by then.
Boone has been emphatic about the team staying positive and controlling its own destiny, but he also knows that there needs to be some urgency.
“Morale is fine,” Boone said Sunday. “It’s on us. We know what’s in front of us. We know the expectations on us. We can talk about it. Everyone I know is going to talk about it. We gotta go do it. We got the canvas in front of us to write our own script, and that’s what we’re working hard to do.”
As has been the case all season — and dating back to the offseason — actions will speak louder than words.
