Freefall persists as Pineda and rally falter YANKS LETTING IT SLIDE
The comeback told you they’re not ready to be dismissed easily as contenders. With a show of force that featured Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez hitting backto-back in the lineup for the first time, in fact, the Yankees turned an early 7-0 deficit at the Stadium into a thriller. In the end, though, the 7-6 loss to the Rangers on Sunday did nothing more to stop the hemorrhaging than a demoralizing rout. This is no time for moral victories, after all. The Yankees needed this one badly, so badly that Joe Girardi used both Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman out of the bullpen with his team trailing at the time, which he rarely does.
By then it felt like Judge and Sanchez were going to find a way to pull out the win, but instead the Yankees find themselves hip-deep in an ugly skid that has seen them lose 10 of 12 games, with pitching issues and injuries making it feel like they’ve crashed into a crisis point in their feel-good season.
For starters, Michael Pineda is suddenly cause for concern, and while you knew his history of inconsistency would rear its head again, it seemed he’d raised his game this season to the point where he could avoid this type of clunker.
Two innings into the game, however, he’d given up threerun home runs to Adrian Beltre and Shin-Soo Choo, looking like the Pineda who has frustrated the Yankees in past years by being unable to limit the damage on his bad days.
As Girardi put it: “It’s finding a way to get out of innings. Today is the first time (this season) he hasn’t done it.’’
Even so, this was Pineda’s third poor start in his last five, and it was especially alarming because the Yankees really needed a stopper, with so much
going wrong for them lately.
Yet it also seemed as if they were on their way to overcoming Pineda’s pitching, but then Sanchez made an egregious baserunning mistake, getting nailed trying to go first-to-third on Didi Gregorius’ seventh-inning single to right field to kill a rally.
Girardi equated the mistake to the Yankees’ fortunes of late, making the case that players force the issue when a team is going bad.
“He’s trying to do too much there,’’ Girardi said. “Maybe it’s the frustration of the last two weeks.”
Sanchez, meanwhile, admitted his mistake, though he wouldn’t say if he got caught thinking Choo, in right field, was going to throw home to try and nail Judge rather than to third. He did admit that he saw third-base coach Joe Espada signaling for him to stop at second.
“I kept going,’’ he said. “I really thought I had a chance to make it. He made a great throw.’’
It’s not like Sanchez is a speedburner and he has to know better, especially at a time when every little mistake seems to be haunting the Yankees.
In any case, now they’re fighting injuries as well. Aaron Hicks left Sunday’s game with an oblique strain that Girardi said is likely to put him on the 10-day disabled list; Starlin Castro was unavailable after getting a cortisone shot for a wrist injury that has been bothering him for a few weeks; and Matt Holliday was out sick again with an ailment Girardi said may be related to the allergy reaction that sidelined him a few days ago.
Throw in the ongoing wait for Greg Bird to come to the rescue at first base, and CC Sabathia’s hamstring injury that has weakened the starting rotation, and with all the losing lately the Yankees have to feel as if the walls are closing in on them a bit.
“You worry about the injuries,” Girardi said, addressing the state of the ballclub. “You’ve gotta keep (the losing) in perspective. It’s a two-week period and we’re still tied for first place. We could have gotten ourselves in trouble.”
It feels like they are in trouble, no matter what the AL East standings say. All along you knew they were going to need pitching help over the long haul, but if Pineda is regressing, well, the Yankees can only hope that Masahiro Tanaka’s dominant start Friday night was the start of something big.
The good news is that Judge continues to prove he’s the real thing, going 2-for-3 with a walk to raise his on-base percentage to a rather astounding .440.
His two-out at-bat in the ninth against closer Matt Bush, with the crowd standing and roaring, was a testament to his remarkable progress, as he fought off 99mph fastballs and then lined an 81-mph curveball at the knees for Sa single to keep hope alive. anchez had already homered following a Judge single to start the comeback four innings earlier, and though he struck out chasing a breaking ball to end the game, this day was a reminder that with Judge and Sanchez, now hitting 3-4, the Yankees always have a chance.
That is, if everything else isn’t starting to unravel around them.