So to summarize this nearly dead Yankees season: First they pitched and didn’t hit. Then they briefly pitched and hit simultaneously. Then they hit and didn’t pitch.
And now they’ve come full circle: They are neither hitting nor pitching as they stomp on the embers of their ultra-thin hopes.
It’s neither a matter of bad timing nor of “not firing on all cylinders.” It’s just a mediocre baseball team meeting its proper fate.
The Yankees can be fully eliminated from the playoffs Wednesday night because they laid another egg Tuesday. If their fans weren’t sufficiently agitated by a delayed delivery of the Mariano Rivera bobblehead dolls, then the 7-0 loss to the Rays surely accomplished that mission.
“Right now, we need a ton of help, and we need to win every game or we’re not going to get in,” manager Joe Girardi said, “and that’s the hard part, because of what you go through.”
At 82-75, the Yankees can’t catch up to the Rays (88-69), who own the first American League wild card. Thanks to Cleveland’s 5-4 victory over the White Sox — with Jason Giambi, of all people, delivering a walk-off homer for the Indians (87-70) — the Yankees’ tragic number to be excised altogether is one. Just one more Yankees loss or Indians victory, and the Yankees will be officially out of the postseason for the first time since 2008.
Loss 75, the most in a Yankees season since 1992, occurred because the Yankees worked Tampa Bay starter Matt Moore for 107 pitches in just five innings yet couldn’t convert on any of their many opportunities. Instead, they stranded 10 runners, six in scoring position during Moore’s work shift, and overall, they went 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
You could point to this night as typical of this disappointing Yankees season, since “failure to hit with runners in scoring position” has been a theme associated with this franchise for many years. However, you’d be dead wrong. The 2013 Yankees’ primary problem on offense has been a failure to put runners on base, rather than how they hit once they got them there.
Hiroki Kuroda, who suffered poor run support throughout this trying campaign, gave up three runs through four batters in the first inning and then found himself, keeping his club in the game by putting up zeroes from the second through the fifth. He certainly gave his teammates a chance to get back in. However, as the Yankees kept leaving ducks on the pond, Kuroda’s apparent fatigue kicked in once more in the sixth, as he loaded the bases with one out and surrendered a two-run double to James Loney, a hit that sucked all the life out of the Stadium.
Kuroda now has a 6.56 ERA in his last eight starts. He ran out of gas when the Yankees needed him the most. Through an interpreter, Kuroda said, “I’m really disappointed that I’m not contributing to our team.”
Fatigue has seemed to pervade this Yankees team in the final month, as they’re now 10-12 in September. The lineup, which heated up upon the acquisition of Alfonso Soriano and return of Alex Rodriguez, now looks cooked. Soriano’s sprained right thumb is bothering him so much that, when he was conducting an interview with me Tuesday afternoon, he cringed as he tried swinging a bat in his chair. He taped up the thumb and started. While A-Rod is making solid contact, he isn’t driving the ball as much since suffering left hamstring and right calf injuries.
“When you’re going well and you’re swinging the bats well and you’re winning games, guys aren’t tired,” Girardi said. “But when you don’t score runs and you’re losing games, all of a sudden that word comes up a lot. To me, it’s an excuse, is what it is. I have not forgotten what it’s like to play. You’ve got to find a way. That’s your job.”
Excuse or not, that’s what it looks like on the field and feels like in the clubhouse. Girardi’s team has now been outscored for the season, 655-637. Teams with that negative run differential aren’t supposed to post a winning record, let alone qualify for the playoffs. They’re overachievers, and it appears they’re done achieving.
No hitting and no pitching make the Yankees dull boys. It’s a boring finish to a season that has been fascinating for all of the wrong reasons.