The Yankees scored six runs on Friday night to give them an MLB-high 494 runs this season.
Still, when Luis Severino said (jokingly) that the Yankees’ offense was comprised of Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and not much else, it’s hard to argue with the way they’ve been playing recently.
In Friday’s 6-1 win over Tampa Bay, Anthony Volpe got the game’s biggest hit, a three-run double in the third inning, but the bulk of the offense still came from Soto and Judge.
As Severino said in Miami, where the Mets opened the second half of the season on Friday, he spoke to several former Yankees teammates about “only having two good hitters.”
Severino laughed as he said that, but he has a point, even if head coach Aaron Boone disagrees.
“We’ll see how it goes when it’s all said and done,” Boone said. “When you add it all up, I think we’re at the top of the league in points scored, even though we’ve had our slip-ups at times. [Severino] … Hopefully we’ll be able to answer him.”
While Severino isn’t scheduled to pitch against his former team in next week’s Subway Series (which is why he’s been talked about as a problem with the Yankees’ lineup), the Yankees are looking for more consistency across the lineup.
Boone made no changes to the lineup after the All-Star break, with Ben Rice continuing to bat as leadoff hitter ahead of Soto and Judge, and struggling Alex Verdugo continuing to hit fourth.
“Somebody’s got to grab it,” Boone said before the game about why Verdugo is still hitting cleanup despite not having produced results since early May. “Giancarlo [Stanton] under [with a strained hamstring]we are a little skinny, [Verdugo]I think he’s going to be an Alex Verdugo type of hitter in the future.”
Verdugo didn’t get a hit on Friday, and Boone gave no guarantees about whether he would stay.
“If someone [else] “If we earn that spot, so be it,” Boone said.
Considering the state of their batting lineup, especially against right-handed pitchers, they don’t have many other options.
Rice was first, Verdugo was fourth and Austin Wells, a left-hander like Rice and Verdugo, was sixth.
The main reason the Yankees lost 18 of their last 26 games before the break is because a large portion of their batting lineup was struggling.
General manager Brian Cashman and the front office will be able to fill some holes before the July 30 trade deadline, but the Yankees will also be looking for more from reliable late-inning players such as Verdugo, infielders DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres.
LeMahieu returned to the lineup at third base on Friday.
He went into the break hitless in 10 at-bats after a 5-for-11 run that briefly gave him hope that he was coming out of a long slump.
He went 0-for-4 on Friday and drew some boos, but that wasn’t surprising given his slugging percentage as of Friday was .214, the worst of any player with at least 130 at-bats this season.
His OPS against right-handers is a poor .562, worse than Oswaldo Cabrera’s .662, but LeMahieu is unhittable against lefties with an OPS of .343.
And the corner infield situation isn’t getting any better: Anthony Rizzo is still recovering from a broken arm, and J.D. Davis just returned from a bout of stomach flu and hasn’t shown much since being acquired from Oakland.
Jon Bertie, who the Yankees had hoped would be at least one other option, suffered a setback in his return with a torn calf muscle.
