From Bryan Hoch:
A third contest spent grinding bat handles into sawdust prompted the Yankees to gather as a group late on Tuesday.
It wasn’t quite a team meeting, but more of a reminder — they’re still the same lineup that has produced some of the American League’s biggest numbers, and they expect to do so again.
The Yankees were blanked for a third consecutive game, watching their team scoreless streak extend to 29 innings in a 4-0 loss to the Angels at Yankee Stadium. New York has lost a season-high five straight.
A couple of things.
First off, the pitching is still there, which is very nice. In this same six game pathetic stretch where the Yankees have only scored five runs (which is comical in how pathetic it is), they’ve only allowed 13 runs. So that’s obviously quite good, so the pitching is still there.
The hitting, though, holy shit, the hitting.
Secondly, I think it is important to give Kyle Hendricks his flowers. He’s had a terrible season so far, but you have to admit that even as shitty as the Yankees hitters are, Hendricks was great last night. He was like peak Tom Glavine last night, painting the outside corners all night. Some of the pitches were probably technically balls, but he was routinely getting so close to the edge that I can’t begrudge the umpire too much for giving him the benefit of the doubt on them. He looked amazing. There was this one at-bat against LeMahieu where I think he struck him out on, like, three straight called strikes, and I legit couldn’t tell you which one of the three that LeMahieu should have swung at. None of them looked good coming to the plate, and all three clipped the corners, all at different points in the strike zone (you know, top left, bottom right, bottom left, etc.). Two things can be true – Kyle Hendricks could have pitched a great game, and the Yankees could be choky losers. You might argue that Hendricks was more aggressive than normally BECAUSE the Yankees are choky losers. Whatever the reason, he DID pitch well. That wasn’t just some phantom pitching performance driven by the Yankees’ shittiness. He WAS good.
Beyond that, it’s crazy, the Yankees are getting a decent amount of guys on base, they’re just never getting hits with runners on. It’s got to be mental at this point. They’re all choking. And honestly, I think we’re starting to see why Judge sucks in the playoffs, as his at-bats, in particular, have been PATHETIC in this stretch of games, as he has completely altered his approach because he is clearly pressing.
He went from being an above average hitter in terms of chase rate to being WELL below average at chase rate. He is freaking out, and trying to hit five-run home runs every time, and the pitchers are taking advantage of that impatience, just like they do in the playoffs, when Judge also presses. For such a great hitter, he can be such a moron sometimes.
Of course, when some close pitches get called strikes when they were probably balls, it just feeds into Judge’s neuroses, so that’s why it really hurt to see him strike out on a pitch probably just off of the plate, which I have here as the featured image.
Saw a post on Reddit where the Yankees rank pretty highly in mlb on barrels and hard hit metrics during this offensive drought. So there’s some hope that they right the ship.
A few of these games it really felt like just bad luck. The first game against the Angels, for instance, they had SEVEN HITS. It wasn’t like they were just getting dominated like Bello, Crochet, and Hendricks. But, well, three dominated games is still too many in a five-game stretch, ya know?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked.