Yankees look like team that’s running out of gas
OAKLAND, Calif. — The safety net, as it were, remains taut. But the Yankees sure seem determined to test it, don’t they? The best thing you can say about the Yankees’ trip to Northern California is that it could have gone even worse. It couldn’t have concluded in worse fashion, however, with this disastrous, alarm-sounding, 8-2 loss to the A’s on Wednesday night at Oakland Coliseum, during which their titular ace and their formerly stud catcher competed arduously, early, for the goat’s horns. Is there any less desirable sensation for a baseball team than slogging in September? The Yankees have now lost two and tied one of their last three series, posting a 4-6 record at a juncture they hoped to soar. “I want to get rolling, no question about it,” Aaron Boone said. “I think we’re doing some things well, but we’re not certainly rolling like we’re capable of … If we want to get to where we want to go, we’ve got to play better, period.” Because they prevailed in Tuesday’s middle game, a 5-1 triumph fueled by Luke Voit’s hitting and J.A. Happ’s pitching, the Yankees (87-53) head to Seattle holding a respectable 3 ½-game lead, four in the loss column, over the A’s (84-57). Yet little doubt exists over which of these clubs stands as the rising stock and which the falling entity, and it would surprise no one if the gap shrunk rather than grew as we proceed. Look, maybe a healed Didi Gregorius will rejoin the team this weekend at Safeco Field, and Aaron Judge will sufficiently strengthen his right wrist in prompt fashion, and this club will reclaim the magic that made it such a dynamo in the season’s first half. Far stranger turnarounds have occurred. Right now, though, you’d bet heavier on Boone’s maiden voyage going down as a 100-ish-victory disappointment. That’s in no small part thanks to Wednesday night’s starter and loser Luis Severino and his battery mate Gary Sanchez, who turned the bottom of the first inning into the worst pairing since Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone in “The Specialist.” Have you ever seen anything like the twowild-pitches, two-passed-balls, twodoubles, two-singles dumpster fire that the Yankees endured? Severino and Sanchez looked more out of sync than AOL and Time Warner as the A’s leapt to a 4-0 lead.
“It was a mess,” Severino acknowledged, before offering this surprising explanation: “I’ve been working with [Austin] Romine for a long time, and we use different signs.”
It’s not like Severino and Sanchez took years off from working together. More like six weeks.
The confusion between the two begged forward-looking questions: Is Severino, his ERA rising to 3.52 with his 2 2/3-inning, six-run outing, still the man you want starting that wild-card game? And should Sanchez, his defense looking as bad as ever and his bat overall tepid, remain the Yankees’ No. 1 catcher?
If the wild-card game occurred today, I’d pair up Severino with Romine, thanks to Severino’s superior ceiling to J.A. Happ’s and Romine’s reliability on defense. You could convince me to go with Happ, though. Sanchez? Eh, no matter that Boone praised his catcher for “reining it in” after the first.
They aren’t the sort of decisions a playoff team wants to contemplate. Then again, this isn’t the sort of baseball a postseason club wants to be plplaying.
With crunch time here, can the YaYankees outrun the A’s to avoid a retuturn here for that Oct. 3, loser-goeshohome contest? Their schedule — and ththeir league — might very well bail ththem out again. Of their remaining 22 gagames, nine come against clubs mailining it in (three each with the Twins, Blue Jays and Orioles), three versus the imploding Mariners this weekend at Safeco Field, four with the dangerous Rays and six with the elite Red Sox, who, ironically, could be resting and prepping for the postseason by that time, the division and top seed potentially clinched.
Eventually, be it this month or next, the Yankees will perform live without a net. Are you eagerly anticipating that scenario or dreading it?
At the moment, is it even a close call?