The Yankees were walked off against by the Tigers on Sunday in a 3-2, 10-inning loss. With the loss, the Yankees ended their six-game road trip against the White Sox and Tigers at 3-3.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. I didn’t feel good seeing Clay Holmes warming up on the Williamsport mound on Sunday night with the Yankees only holding a one-run lead. I don’t think any Yankees fan did. Because for all the times John Sterling told us “You can’t predict baseball” over 30-plus years, sometimes you can.
Holmes let a sub-.700 OPS hitter (Colt Keith) smoke a one-out double to left field, and when one out away from maintaining a one-game division lead on the Orioles, he let Jace Jung and his 11 career plate appearance single in Keith for his first career RBI.
2. The blown save was Holmes’ league-leading 10th of the year. Emmanuel Clase (3), Ryan Hensley (3), Kenley Jansen (3) and Josh Hader (1) have 10 combined. If Holmes just sucked as a closer and had say seven blown saves, the Yankees would have a three-game division lead. Instead, he has been impossibly bad with 10.
Since June 13, Holmes has as many saves as blown saves with seven. The Yankees are 11-10 in the 21 games he has appeared in in that time. The Yankees are now 4-7 in extra innings this season because they have a great manager and a great bullpen.
3. “I thought the sinker was good tonight,” Aaron Boone said of Holmes. “The slider was good.”
You know who else thought the sinker and slider were good? Colt Keith and Jace Jung.
“I felt pretty good,” Holmes said, “just two pitches there got me.”
It can’t be “just two pitches” getting you when you’re the closer. The margin for error is zero or close to it when you’re getting the final three outs of a one-run game.
Boone was asked if he is committed to Holmes as his closer for the rest of the season despite him having 10 blown saves.
“Yeah, yeah,” Boone said. “He’s had some tough breaks back there that have led to that.”
Poor Holmes. He’s just had some tough breaks and is really unlucky. I can think of a lot of miraculous breaks he has been on the right end of this season that has prevented his blown save total from being 12 or 13. Holmes is the first Yankees pitcher with 10 blown saves in a season in 37 years.
If you think Holmes is going to lose his job due to poor performance, look no further than Boone himself who is in his seventh year as Yankees manager despite owning zero pennants, but rather a CVS receipt-length list of embarrassing franchise records and moments. Look no further than how Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo or Anthony Volpe have been treated this year. Being bad at your job as a Yankee doesn’t lead to losing your job. It doesn’t even lead to diminished playing time or a lesser role.
4. The Yankees’ season is likely to end in disappointment with Holmes on the mound. He has spent nearly five months foreshadowing the ending that is coming for the 2024 Yankees and no one has done or is doing anything about it.
Brian Cashman didn’t do anything about it. He knew he gave up four arms in the deal for Juan Soto and knew Wendy Peralta was leaving in free agency and didn’t replace them in the offseason. Instead he counted on the always-injured Jonathan Loaisiga to stay healthy. He watched his bullpen blow countless games in the first half of the season and added two mediocre arms at the deadline. One of those arms has put 22 baserunners on in 8 1/3 innings with a 6.48 ERA and the other was already designated for assignment and is now on the White Sox.
Boone isn’t doing anything about it, still supporting Holmes, making excuses for him and talking about bad breaks, rather than a solution or a change in the role.
For any of the other 29 teams in the league, the general manager and manager would have urgency to stop using a closer who can’t close for fear of their job. But there’s no fear for either. Cashman told the world the team “is pretty fucking good” after they went 82-80 and missed the playoffs in a format in which 40 percent of the league makes it despite having the highest payroll in the American League. He’s an adopted member of the Steinbrenner family and not even a last-place finish would end his run with the organization. Boone managed the team to its worst season in 30 years a year after he oversaw a second-half collapse and sweep in the ALCS in which he tried to motivate his team by using the darkest four-game period in the franchise’s history with 2004 ALCS “highlights.”
5. Boone would rather have Holmes standing on the mound as Jose Altuve races home as the pennant-winning or have Yordan Alvarez trotting around the bases with Holmes hanging his head than ruin his friendship or relationship with Holmes by removing him from the closer role.
Maybe Luke Weaver or Jake Cousins or anyone else would be as big of a disaster as Holmes has been as the closer. It’s unlikely, but I guess it’s possible that they also would be the worst closer in the league. But we’ll never know because the next time the Yankees need to close out a game leading by three runs or less in the ninth inning, Boone will go to his guy. If he does his job, great for Boone. If he doesn’t do his job, still great for Boone. There are no consequences for not performing.
6. If there were consequences for not performing, Torres and his .660 OPS wouldn’t be leading off against lefties and Verdugo and his .657 OPS wouldn’t be leading off against righties. Volpe and his .673 OPS over 1,156 plate appearances would have spent at least some time in the minors since Opening Day 2023. Instead, Volpe leads the majors in games played (124) and is one off the major-league lead in at-bats with 514.
7. Volpe went 2-for-12 against the Tigers. One of the two was an infield hit that needed replay review to confirm if he was safe. In the last two weeks, he’s 4-for-42 with three walks, and he’s only that because he went 2-for-10 with three walks against the White Sox. Aside from his three walks against the worst team in the history of baseball, Volpe has one walk in the month. A month! Since August 4, he’s 6-for-51 with 18 strikeouts and a .339 OPS, hitting .118/.182/.157. But every day, there he is, starting at shortstop and batting sixth or seventh. And there he is striking out or hitting the weakest ground ball you have ever seen to the shortstop.
“You can’t tell when things are going good or when he’s going through a rough stretch,” Boone said of Volpe’s demeanor.
You can’t tell because he has only been going through a rough stretch since his first major-league plate appearance.
Oswald Peraza got called up last week. The first day of his call up he didn’t play. The second day, he played and hit a home run, so naturally, the next day he didn’t play again. The next day he got face to the favorite for AL Cy Young this season. If Volpe hit a home run like Peraza did on Friday, they would already be promoting another bobblehead night for him. Unfortunately, for Peraza, he wasn’t born in New York City and didn’t grow up in New Jersey as a Yankees fan.
8. Playing infrequently when you have only ever played every day is hard. Just ask Austin Wells. You know what else is hard? Getting called up for a spot start in the outfield when the favorite for AL Cy Young is starting like Jasson Dominguez did. Boone said Dominguez would be sent down again after Sunday’s game, so even if Dominguez had hit a pair of home runs off Tarik Skubal it wouldn’t have mattered. “There’s no lane” for Dominguez and playing time on the Yankees Cashman said last week. His lane is blocked by Verdugo. Verdugo is hitting .233/.294/.363. He last hit a home run on July 6, which is his only home run since June 14. He hasn’t homered against a team not named the Red Sox since May 29. So he last homered against not the Red Sox on Memorial Day Weekend and last homered period on Fourth of July Weekend. Labor Day Weekend is only two weeks away, so I guess we know when his next home run will be.
Dominguez was good enough to bat fifth against the best pitcher in the AL, but not good enough to be on the team after the game. Boone decided he would use all right-handed hitters except Juan Soto against Skubal, no matter how weak (Torres, Volpe, Jose Trevino) most of his hitters are. The thing about great pitchers like Skubal is that they don’t care what hand the opposition swings with or what nonsensical platoon you think you are going to employ. Skubal pitched six innings and only allowed one run on a wild pitch.
“9. I thought we made him work hard,” Boone said of his offense. “We didn’t do a lot against him, obviously, but I thought we made it challenging for him.”
I don’t know how you can say you “made him work hard” and then in your very next thought say “We didn’t do a lot against him, obviously,” and then in the thought after that say “We made it challenging for him.”
“We had a little bit of a down weekend offensively, which is going to happen,” Boone said. “But credit to them.”
Yes, credit to the fourth-place, under-.500 Tigers. The Yankees’ offense remains two hitters Soto and Aaron Judge and Wells when he’s allowed to play, which has been just one of three games since Trevino and his noodle arm and noodle bat have returned. The Yankees’ run total for the season is built on infrequent blowouts like the one against the White Sox or the random one against the Phillies or the 30 runs over two days against the Brewers back in April. Getting blanked by a starter with a 5.28 ERA like they did on Saturday or getting shut down by an elite pitcher like Skubal like they did on Sunday is more of who they are. Over the last 19 innings against the Tigers, the Yankees scored two runs: one on a wild pitch and one from the automatic runner.
10. The Yankees are now 8-7 in August against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers, White Sox and Tigers. None of those five teams are even .500, let alone playing with postseason aspirations. Next up is a three-game series at home against the Guardians, a first-place team that’s 20 games over .500.
I don’t know how the Yankees will play against a team with a winning record given how they played over the last two weeks against some of the league’s worst. I do know Dominguez will remain in Triple-A, Peraza will remain on the bench, Volpe will play every day, Trevino will take at-bats from Wells, Torres and Verdugo will alternate hitting leadoff and in the middle of the order and Holmes will be closing.
Last modified: Aug 19, 2024
