PINEDA CAN’T KEEP IT UP
BIG MIKE FLOPS VS. CHISOX AFTER BEST START OF YEAR
CHICAGO — Up and down. Back and forth. The Yankees keep going nowhere. But a sports entity shouldn’t be defined only by its sum result. Even on a wayward ship, crew members can stand out. As so many Yankees raise more questions about their viability, Didi Gregorius keeps providing answers.
Yeah, the Yankees lost again on Wednesday night, 5-0 to the White Sox on U.S. Cellular Field, and if you watch this team regularly (insert masochism joke here), this surely felt like a repeat. Michael Pineda retired the first two batters in the second, then allowed four runs before picking up the third out. The eminently mediocre Miguel Gonzalez started for the White Sox and shut the Yankees down on five hits and a walk over seven innings. In all, the Yankees went hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position.
They fell to 41-43, the 16th time this season they’ve sat two games under .500, as they headed to Cleveland, where the American League Centralleading Indians await them.
On the bright side of this bleak outlook rests Gregorius, who excelled in every capacity to continue his surge of late. On the day the Yankees announced a two-week suspension for promising minor-league shortstop Jorge Mateo, no concerns loomed about the team’s future at shortstop.
“I’m feeling good. I try to play my ass off every day,” Gregorius said, after going 3-for-4. “Just trying to play the game the right way. Trying to get better. Trying to make adjustments. Trying to do everything the right way and trying to be a better player.”
“He’s just playing really well,” manager Joe Girardi said. “It’s what you hope when you make a trade like that, that a young player matures and, when he gets a chance to play every day, he gets better and better. And that’s what we’re seeing.”
Gregorius now owns a .293/.321/.445 slash line, superior to his final 2015 count of .265/.318/.370. That he is not on pace to match his 2015 value, if you go by Wins Above Replacement, speaks to his defensive struggle; with 11 errors, he almost has matched last year’s total of 11.
However, one-year defensive measures can be misleading. To watch Gregorius regularly is to appreciate both his range and his athleticism on defense. On Wednesday, he twice dove to his right to make stops for outs, and he executed a nice tag on Avisail Garcia on an attempted steal of second base.
He stole second base himself in the second inning, and for the finishing touch on this great individual performance from a lousy team night, Gregorius channeled his predecessor, Derek Jeter, in the fifth inning. After leading off with a single, he ran to second on Chase Headley’s grounder to Chisox second baseman Brett Lawrie and, with the infield shifted on Headley, kept running to the unoccupied third base.
“I looked up, and there was nobody there,” Gregorius said. “And that’s when I went. You enjoy watching Carlos Beltran hit, or Masahiro Tanaka craft, or Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman throw smoke? Makes sense. Right now, though, the best total package on the Yankees arguably belongs to Gregorius. And Gregorius, acquired after the 2014 season, has three years beyond this one until he can become a free agent.
“I still think he’ll grow a lot more,” Girardi said. “But he’s made a lot of progress in this year and a half. He’s worked really hard. We’re proud of what he’s done.”
It comes as welcome news for an organization that tried to walk the tightrope this year, acquiring younger players while not conceding a playoff berth, and has seen so much go so badly with those acquisitions. Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi (who relieved Pineda on Wednesday), Luis Severino, Aaron Hicks and Starlin Castro all have underwhelmed.
There’s still time, mathematically, for these Yankees to change their narrative and to become a bona fide contender for a wild-card spot. That math doesn’t favor the Yankees.
On the other hand, the more you see of Gregorius, the more you think he can rise above the wreckage and be a part of the next seriously contending Yankees team. He’s up. Way up.