I love the NY press when things go south for the empire. Like the working press in most cities, they spend a lot of time with the players and, I assume, want them to do well, stopping short, as journalists should, of actually rooting for the team. However, the NY beat writers do not share the sense of entitlement common to the typical Yankee fan and tend to view the team's performance and outlook more dispassionately than to those wearing the pinstripe colored glasses. Here are a few pieces from this morning's coverage of the Yankees' season bottoming out last night.
Ken Davidoff in the NY Post:
OAKLAND — At the conclusion of this futility marathon, the boxscore revealed the ugly truth:
Mark Teixeira, Travis Hafner, Kevin Youkilis and Vernon Wells — the Yankees’ fourth-through-seventh hitters yesterday — combined to go 0-for-28 with 12 strikeouts.
“That’s a no-hitter for all of us,” the Georgia Tech product Teixeira calculated out loud. “That’s not good.”
No, it was pretty darn terrible, as some fantastic Yankees pitching went for naught in a brutal, 18-inning, 3-2 loss to the A’s at O.co Coliseum, sweeping the visitors out of northern California.
Perhaps a visit to the lousy Angels at the state’s other end, starting tonight at Angel Stadium, will soothe the Yankees’ ailing bats. Yet with a record of 37-29, already having overcome so much just to get here, it’s fair to wonder:
Are there enough potential rebounds in this Yankees lineup to send the team back in the right direction?
The Yankees now have a ghastly team on-base percentage of .305 — they were at .337 last year — and their 260 runs rank 11th in the American League. They wouldn’t have reached even that modest height without unexpectedly significant contributions from Hafner, Wells and Lyle Overbay.
But 96 games remain, and none of the injured position players (Francisco Cervelli, Curtis Granderson, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez) will be returning imminently. One or more might not return at all. So how do the Yankees solve this puzzle? They sure as heck can’t pitch much better than they have been.
Most painful for the Yankees yesterday, they put runners in scoring position in each of the first five extra innings and couldn’t bring a run home in any of them, going a combined 0-for-9 in those situations and stranding 11 baserunners just in the extra innings.
“We had a few opportunities to do it,” Wells said. “Obviously, collectively, we were pretty bad at it.”
Who from this collection can emerge with value? Teixeira is the one guy who 1) has a recent track record of success, albeit diminished from his career peak; and 2) has taken some good swings lately. He has 12 RBIs in 57 plate appearances since coming off the disabled list on May 31.
“This series was a lot better. Just keep working. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Teixeira said. “Keep swinging the bat well. The positive thing is, I’m driving in runs. I didn’t do it today. The first two games of the series were good.”
Youkilis has been dreadful since being activated the same night as Teixeira, putting up six hits and four walks in 45 plate appearances, striking out 13 times.
“A lot of us didn’t get the job done. I’m one of them,” Youkilis said. “It was [bleep]-poor performance in my mind. I need to start stepping it up and playing a lot better.”
It’s worth remembering that Youkilis’ 2012 performance diminished considerably from 2011, and the downward slope simply might be continuing now.
Wells — whose season slash line is now down to an ugly .226 AVG, .274 OBP, and .386 SLG — looks cooked. He probably should be starting against left-handers only, which means the Yankees either need to give Overbay more of an opportunity in the outfield, defense be damned, or they should dispose of Overbay and call up the healing Brennan Boesch, who has been on the minor-league disabled list with an injured left shoulder.
“You get frustrated from time to time. I’m human,” Wells said. “But you keep working. You try to work your way out of it. That’s what I love about this game. You never have it figured out.”
It’s doubtful that too many Yankees are loving Wells’ decline. As for Hafner, with 52 games played, he’s approaching his total for all of last year (66) and is within shouting distance of his 2011 total (94). It’s worth wondering how much he has left in the tank. Even 2012 A-Rod could help considerably at designated hitter, or third base.
Asked if a loss like this would be difficult to shake off for the 0-for-28 quartet, manager Joe Girardi said, “If they’re young kids, you worry about it. Because they’re veterans, I think they’ll be able to get it out.”
This might not be a mental issue, though. The Yankees need more firepower. Can this crew keep things afloat until the re-enforcements arrive? That once again is in doubt.
Here's Chad Jennings of the Lohud blog
Of all people, it was Mark Teixeira who immediately found big picture perspective on just how bad 0-for-28 really is.
“That’s a no-hitter,” Teixeira said.
Think about that. When a pitcher throws a no-hitter, it means 27 outs without a hit. The Yankees 4 through 7 hitters were one out worse than that. Plus they had 12 strikeouts, nine of which came in extra innings. It was a brutal showing for an offense that has been trending downward for the better part of a month and a half, and tonight it just kept finding new levels of rock bottom with every run-scoring opportunity.
“You have to come up with big hits,” Vernon Wells said. “We had a few opportunities to do it, but obviously collectively as a big group we were pretty bad at it.”
Travis Hafner has five hits in his past 14 games, and you could make the case that his slump is the least significant of the bunch (he still has the third-highest OPS on the roster). Wells is hitting .185 with seven extra-base hits since the end of April. Teixeira has 19 strikeouts in 49 at-bats since joining the team. Kevin Youkilis is hitting .146 with one RBI since coming off the disabled list.
“I haven’t done the right things, and I’ve got to do better,” Youkilis said. “There’s no other explanation but you’ve got to play better.”
This was surely as bad as it gets — if only because those four surely won’t get 28 at-bats in another game — but Teixeira is still working his way back into a rhythm, and the other three are older players coming off down seasons. Aside from Teixeira saying he felt better this series than he felt in Seattle, there’s really no indication that things are about to turn around except for the perpetual optimism of veteran players who always believe they’ll be able to come through the next time.
“In theory, you’d like half your guys — if they’re going to be struggling — that the other guys are still swinging the bat well,” Wells said. “For the most part, it’s been the whole group. Gardy’s been the most consistent over this last week and a half, two weeks. Now Robbie is starting to swing the bat. We’ll start getting some guys going here and there, come together as a group and start swinging the bats a little better.”
It’s certainly hard to imagine them swinging the bats any worse.
