The Yankees were nearly shutout for a third consecutive game
The Yankees lost 3–1 to the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium and the offense was inept yet again. In the last three games, a span of 27 innings, the Yankees have only scored one run and they are only 1–10 with runners in scoring position in that span.
Nestor Cortes pitched well in this game and his three earned runs with four hits allowed should have been enough most games for him to get a win but that is impossible when the Yankees score only one run. Cortes, whose 2.74 ERA in 22 starts is impressively the seventh best ERA in the AL, gave up a three-run homer to Randy Arozarena in the first inning and that was too much for the Yankees to overcome.
Cortes was a bright spot in a game that the Yankees offense did not produce yet again. Cortes has now allowed three runs or less in each of his last seven starts (two runs or less in five of those starts) after allowing four runs in a start three times in a six start span. Cortes pitched 7.0 innings for the first time since July 14, five starts ago, when he allowed just one run and four hits in those seven innings. He has been a very reliable and consistent starter for the Yankees this season and has allowed three earned runs or less in 20 of his 23 starts this season and has allowed two runs or less in 16 of those 20 starts.
The Yankees only had four hits in this game and Andrew Benintendi had two of those hits. The one through five hitters in the lineup combined to go only 2–20. Josh Donaldson got one of those our four hits as the cleanup hitter but he is only 3–25 in his last seven games.
Benintendi has been hitting well recently since he is 10–33 with six runs scored in his last nine games after going 2–25 in his first nine games with the Yankees but he has basically been the only bright spot on offense recently. Even Aaron Judge, who is on track to be the AL MVP, has been struggling of late. Judge hit into two double plays in Monday’s shutout and he is 1–14 with seven strikeouts in his last four games.
The only run that the Yankees scored in this game was when Benintendi scored and Miguel Andujar was safe at first on Yandy Diaz’s error. Benintendi tripled to deep center with one out and then scored on that error. Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s walk advanced runners to first and second with two outs, but the struggling Marwin Gonzalez grounded into a double play to end the inning.
Gonzalez, who has been getting sporadic at-bats, got the fill in start in right field and went 0–3. Before Tuesday the previous game that he started and got at least one at-bat was on August 7 and before that he got two at-bats on July 28. Going back to July 2, Gonzalez only has two hits in his last 30 at-bats (.067) after going 13–41 in June (.317).
The crowd was into it and made noise in the fifth after they scored a run and put multiple runners on base but the Yankees did nothing after that and they gave the fans nothing to cheer for the rest of the game.
Gleyber Torres, who is 3–28 in his last seven games and has a .164 average in 14 games in August, had what appeared to be a big single up the middle with two outs in the 8th inning to get on base for Judge. With a homer Judge could have tied the game at three. Judge instead grounded into a fielder’s choice to end the eight inning.
The fans turned the bleachers into a barbershop in this game since there was so little action on the field.
Anthony Rizzo, who is just 4–34 (.117) in nine games in August, struck out swinging on a slider that was near his foot for the first out of the ninth inning. Jason Adam’s first two pitches were away so he set him up well for that swinging strikeout. Adam is having a fantastic season for the Rays since he has a minuscule 1.13 ERA in 51 games with 56 strikeouts and a 325 ERA+ in 47.2 innings pitched. Jose Trevino struck out to end the game.
This is the fifth straight series loss. They had five series losses in their previous 31 series. This was the first time the Yankees have lost five straight series since May and June of the 2005 season, which proves how much the Yankees have been underperforming recently.
The Yankees are now 2–11 since the trade deadline and 8–17 since the All-Star Game after entering the All-Star break with the best record in baseball at 64–28. The Yankees now have the fourth best record in MLB (72–45) and trail the Houston Astros by 2.5 games for the best record in the AL. The Yankees have lost 11 of their last 14 games, giving them the worst record in the majors since the start of August — just behind the Athletics (3–10).
Giancarlo Stanton has the third most homers and third most RBI on the team (24 homers and 61 RBI) but has not played in a game since July 23 due to an Achilles injury. He is expected to begin a minor league rehab assignment in the next few days, and that is good for the team since they really need his production back. The Yankees have gone just 7–14 with Stanton out of the lineup.
The Yankees are just 1–6 in their last seven games and in those seven games they have scored just nine runs. That is an average of just 1.29 runs a game over a seven game span. The Yankees will have to start scoring at least 3.5 to 4 runs a game soon to be able to start winning more games and have a chance of finishing with the best record in the AL, which would give them home field advantage if they play the Astros in the ALCS.
