By Paul Semendinger
April 16, 2024
***
About Last Night - Toronto 3, Yankees 1
Quick Stats:
WP - Chris Bassett
LP - Luis Gil
HR - None
Big Story - Regulars to SSTN know that I was at the Mets game last night. I didn't see the Yankees game, except as I was watching the scoreboard. Inning-by-inning, I wondered why the Yankees weren't scoring. (Especially as the Mets were. The Mets won, by the way.)
This was a frustrating game for the Yankees as their pitchers allowed just four hits. It's tough to lose a game when your pitchers allow only four hits... unless your starter walks seven batters in five innings. Not good. Not good, at all.
Player of the Game - Chris Bassett, 6.1 ip, 4 hits, 1 run
Notable Performances - Really, for the Yankees, none.
I hate to admit this, but for the Mets, the hero of the game was Harrison Bader. He had a huge double to give the Mets the lead. Then he stole third and scored on a ground out.
Better to Forget:
Aaron Judge is batting .194 for the season
Trent Grisham is batting .000
Gleyber Torres is batting .209
Austin Wells is hitting .103
Alex Verdugo is batting .224
The Yankees were supposed to have a powerful offense.
My Take - Teams lose games. It happens. BUT. The Yankees lost a game they should have won on Sunday. They followed that up by scoring only one run on Monday. If your pitchers allow only three runs, that's a game, you need to win. They Yankees didn't. For the last week, they have looked flat. The energy, the clutch hitting, the solid play that marked the first weeks of the season went away the last week as we've seen the team hit into a gazillion double plays and play poor defensively. Good teams don't fall into long bad stretches. The Yankees need to bounce back.
It is time to be concerned about Aaron Judge. I'll say it. It's true. Here are his season-by-seaon numbers after his first 17 games:
2017 = .281, 6 HR
2018 = .339, 5 HR
2019 = .274, 4 HR
2020 = .290, 9 HR
2021 = .268, 4 HR
2022 = .274, 4 HR
2023 = ..271, 5 HR
2024 = .194, 3 HR
Let's remember that Aaron Judge hit only .245 in the second half last year after sustaining an injury to his toe.
We sometimes expect our heroes to be superheroes and it just doesn't work that way. Aaron Judge has an injury to his toe that requires constant attention. He had core problems that reduced his Spring Training. He has never started a season this slowly. This is new territory.
Last year, due to mismanagement, poor communication, and whatever else, the Yankees played Anthony Rizzo for nine weeks after he sustained a concussion. Somehow he and the team never had a serious conversation in that time about his health, his struggles, and the impact of the trauma to his head. One has to wonder if the same dynamic is at play this year and Yankees aren't noticing that Judge isn't healthy enough to be the player they expect him to be.
Next Up - Carlos Rodon goes tonight against Yusei Kikuchi
Yankees will need to shed Rizzo's 20 mil salary at the end of the year if they intend to sign Soto. Hopefully they have someone in the minors who can play a good first base and have solid offense.
Before this year i believe Rumfield had low batting averages. How is his defense. Rice needs more seasoning
Everything about Yankee history is being erased. One thing I enjoyed very much was Kate Smith rendition of God Bless America. Everything changes like the Brooklyn Dodgers Happy Felton’s knothole game where young boys participated and received bats balls and gloves. If truth be told the golden age of sports was a heck of a time to be a kid growing up in New York loving sports Today the last of the boys of summer Carl Erskine Oisk passed away and all Brooklyn Dodger fans will today shed a tear
The Yankees were supposed to have a powerful offense.
BETTER NOT TO FORGET
that with half of the hitters starting the season with a depressed batting average, the team is scoring nearly 5 runs/game
and the team's hitters are not faring on many fat pitches.
the Yankees have a larger number of bases on balls than any other team in the AL.
5 BB/game
and the Aaron Judge who is not doing much hitting IS doing a lotta walking, leading the AL in walks
(being walked just as often as the hot-hitting Juan Soto)
what seems apparent is that other teams have been willing to pitch around BOTH Soto and Judge
because neither Gleyber, batting first, nor Rizzo, batting fourth,…
Luis Gil was all over the place the first 3 innings. Had zero FB command early, and it looked like the Yankees never changed the pitch usage. This game, to me, is why a gameplan/pitch selection is far superior way to pitch than pitch usage/gameplan.
As for hitting, where's the bunting? Oh, Cabrera had another RBI knock. Volpe another hit.
Rizzo doesn't look good in the field at all. I Haven't checked the MiLB transactions yet, but has Ben Rice or T.J. Rumfield been moved up yet to AAA? Yesterday was the off day, so it's a lot easier to move guys then.
Paul, I've been to Sept. 11 games, but never to a JRD game - how was it?