When a team that was once the best in baseball suddenly loses 15 of 20 games, there are a number of factors that could be contributing to that.
And the Yankees have delivered plenty since their comeback began in mid-June.
But nothing is more devastating than a starting rotation that went from the best in the major leagues to the worst overnight.
Through 72 games this season, the Yankees’ starting pitchers have the best ERA (2.77) in sports.
Their home runs allowed per nine innings was just 1.01, 10th in the league.
And, according to Fangraphs, their WAR was 6.4, ranking ninth.
Since then, the starting pitching hasn’t just been bad, it’s been by far the worst in the major leagues.
Over his last 20 games, his ERA is last in the league at 6.96 and he is allowing 2.23 home runs per nine innings, the highest rate in MLB.
And their starting pitchers were a combined 35-13 through their first 72 games but are 3-13 since then.
Clarke Schmidt has been out since May 27 with a right latitudinal injury, but the return of Gerrit Cole from an elbow injury that sidelined him all spring was supposed to make up for the deficiency.
Cole’s presence was expected to further strengthen an elite rotation.
In fact, almost the entire rotation fell apart.
Cole, along with Tampa Bay’s Tuesday starter Carlos Rodon and Wednesday’s starter Marcus Stroman, have all had disappointing performances in their past four starts, but Nestor Cortes has a 2.70 ERA over his past four starts and Luis Gil bounced back nicely Sunday after three straight poor innings.
“Guys are going to go through a lot of stuff,” pitching coach Matt Brake said during the team’s just-concluded home game. “You just hope that we don’t have four guys going through it at the same time, but we’ve had some of that recently.”
Manager Aaron Boone said after Sunday’s loss that Gill’s return as a starter could add to his strength.
And Rodon has looked better, even if not better, in recent games.
All eyes will remain on the Yankees and their starting pitching until the team regains momentum.
That leaves the team staggering into its final road trip before the All-Star break, with a series at Tampa Bay on Tuesday followed by a showdown with first-place Baltimore at Camden Yards on Friday.
The Yankees have won four of six games against the Rays this season but are 2-5 against Baltimore and lost three of four games at Camden Yards earlier this year.
“You can’t treat this series any differently than you would treat it if you were in good form,” Cole said when asked how he felt after the first half of games against Tampa Bay and Baltimore. “You know what’s going on. You know you’re not in good form, but that’s the hard part about this game. You’ve got to go into every game fresh and not get too down. It’s hard, but it’s what you have to do. It’s one of the hardest things in sports.”
And in fairness to the pitchers, the offense hasn’t performed much better than the starters lately.
Their team OPS was .772 through June 14, second only to the Dodgers.
Since then, they have a winning percentage of just .700, good for 21st in the major leagues.
Poor performances from Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo exposed the lack of length in the lineup, compounded by the absence of Giancarlo Stanton due to injury.
And even Aaron Judge and Juan Soto proved they were human at times.
Judge’s current 2-for-20 record isn’t cause for concern, nor is Soto’s 11-for-56 with four extra-base hits in his last 17 games, but there’s no one outside of Ben Rice who can fill the void, and it’s unrealistic to expect him to perform well as the league adjusts to him.
Boone said Sunday that Stanton is making good progress in his return from a hamstring injury and noted that Austin Wells has shown some promise at the plate recently, but DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres have struggled to stay consistent.
Nearly the entire Yankees have been in decline since mid-June, when they were atop the world and the American League.
It was just two years ago that the Yankees went from 61-23 and 15.5 games up in the AL East on July 8 — two years ago Monday — to a .500 team for the rest of the season and most of 2023.
And no one could have predicted the predicament the Yankees have found themselves in over the past three-plus weeks.
If they want to avoid the questions that plagued them in the second half of the past two seasons, they’d better stop the bleeding quickly.
“Hopefully we can go into the All-Star Game in good shape,” Boone said Sunday.
If not, we can expect some tough battles over the final two weeks before the trade deadline.
Bullpen bolsters are almost certain to be added via the trade market this month, but with more than half of major league teams still in the wild-card race, there will be more competition than ever before among buyers by the end of July.
