Maybe the sight of the Red Sox will shake the Yankees out of their slumber. Nothing else has worked.
The Royals embarrassed the Yankees 11-5 last night in front of a paid crowd of 41,790 at the Stadium, taking two of three in the series and sending the Yankees into second place for the first time in a month.
It was another sub-par outing for the Yankees, who have failed to take advantage of Boston’s slow start. The Red Sox, idle yesterday, arrive tonight for a three-game series three games below .500.
“Maybe it’s what we need. Maybe we need the Red Sox to come in,” Joe Girardi said. “Everything seems to get turned up, the coverage, the intensity of the games seem to take on a new flavor, each at-bat seems to take on a new game of its own. Maybe it is the right time. I don’t know, but I know we’re capable of playing much better and we need to start doing that.”
Hitting has been the Yankees’ main problem lately, but last night fielding and pitching also were the culprits. The Royals rocked Ivan Nova, scoring six runs in an unbelievably sloppy second inning.
Nova (3-3) lasted a career-worst three innings, and allowed a career-high eight runs. Kansas City’s 11 runs and 16 hits were the most the Yankees have allowed this year.
The game got away in the second when the Yankees committed two errors, had a passed ball and Nova made a mental error throwing to the wrong base. The Royals took a 6-0 lead in the inning, and were on their way to their first series victory in The Bronx since Aug. 17-19, 1999. The Royals won two in a row at Yankee Stadium after losing their last seven road games.
“We’re better than the way we’ve been playing lately,” said Robinson Cano, who was back in the lineup after getting beaned on Wednesday. “It’s still the first month, and we can change things here.”
As Nova stumbled, the Yankees hitters continued to hibernate. Royals starter Sean O’Sullivan had a perfect game in the fifth inning before Cano, with the Yanks down 8-0, slugged his ninth home run of the season.
A night after stranding 15 runners, the Yankees barely had any on base last night. Other than a four-hit, four-run fifth, they were supporting players in the Royals’ show. The Yanks padded the final numbers in the late innings, but the game was already out of reach.
The loss, coupled with the Rays’ win in Cleveland, sent the Yankees into second place in the AL East entering this weekend’s series with the rival Red Sox, who have not fared much better than the Yankees lately.
If the Yankees play anything like they did in the second inning last night, the Red Sox might leave The Bronx feeling a lot better about themselves.
Rookie Eric Hosmer homered to start the ugly inning, but throwing errors by Cano and Francisco Cervelli kept it going. Cervelli also had his first of two passed balls, and Nova failed to field a grounder to the mound cleanly, then threw to first base instead of going home, allowing another run to score.
The two errors gave the Yankees 12 in their last seven games.
“I know we’re capable of playing much better, and you can’t give teams extra outs,” Girardi said. “You give teams extra base runners with errors and walks and you hit guys it’s just going to lead to trouble. Those games are extremely hard to win.”
The Yankees turned to Amaury Sanit, who had been called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre earlier in the day, to serve as the mop-up man in his major league debut. He gave up three more runs to Kansas City.