Maybe the Yankees responded to the pleas of their manager and their GM saying they were on notice that change is coming one way or another. The Yankees’ bats came alive Tuesday night and they scored a season-high 11 runs and snapped a four-game losing streak with a 11-5 win over the Angels at Yankee Stadium.
Or maybe this is just more fool’s gold, a brief moment when they played up to expectations to be followed by more struggles.
The Yankees have less than a month now to figure out what team they are.
With the July 30 trade deadline now a month away, they need to show owner Hal Steinbrenner that they are worth investing in. Or if they continue their inconsistent streaks, they could end up looking to sell to invest in their future.
Cashman said before Tuesday’s game that he is a buyer — for now.
“If we’re falling like a stone, obviously, then you have to regroup and reassess,” the GM said. “Obviously, we’re trying to fix that. We’ve got to correct what we have and add to it, and we can, but if it’s unworthy at some point, then obviously you have different conversations.”
Cashman went on to say that he didn’t have any solutions at the moment, but to expect the current roster to play to the back of their baseball cards. He said the players in the Yankee clubhouse were “on notice,” that things have to change.
“I don’t feel like right now I have definitive obvious upgrades that I can promote from within,” Cashman said. “So that’s why I haven’t done it there. Now, if it materializes outside the organization, great. And obviously, the players that are here are on notice that they’ve got to get better or, you know, there’s going to be changes that are going to come regardless.”
At least for one night, the change was that the Yankees bats worked.
It started with Gary Sanchez. He hit his 14th homer of the season in the first, giving the Yankees their first lead since last Thursday, when they beat the Royals, 8-2. Starter Jameson Taillon gave it back on a two-run homer to Jose Iglesias. Brett Gardner tied it with a sacrifice fly and DJ LeMahieu hit a two-run single.
Aaron Judge hammered his 18th home run of the season, a two-run shot that gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead.
Shohei Ohtani cut the lead to 5-3 with the first of his two home runs on the night in the third. In the fourth, the Yankees tried to put it out of reach with five more runs. Miguel Andujar kicked it off with his first home run in his last 14 games. Sanchez doubled to score Gardner and Luke Voit singled in two runs and scored on Gleyber Torres’ single, his first RBI in 18 games. Torres, who came in to the game in a 3-for-42 slump, had a single in the sixth for his first multi-hit game since June 10.
Those are all good signs for a team that is built on offense, but the question is whether the Yankees will be able to maintain it. They got seven earned runs off lefty Andrew Heaney, who came in with a 4.72 ERA, and one more off a bullpen that came into the game as the third worst in the American League
This was the Yanks’ most productive night offensively of the season, which covered for the fact that they could not get six innings out of Taillon. He allowed five earned runs on nine hits over 5 1/3 innings, walked one and struck out four. He gave up three home runs.
For Taillon, coming off his second Tommy john surgery, the offense was good enough to get him his third win of the season.
Ohtani hit a two-run homer in the fifth inning to cut the lead to 10-5, but that would be as close as the Angels would get.
But in the next month, the Yankees have to get it together, offensively and on the mound.
Before the game, Cashman was blunt about the inconsistent play through the first half of the season.
“I also know that we suck right now, as bad as you can be,” the GM said. “So to kind of knock ourselves out, that is obviously the effort. But until we get online and start flying high again, it’s gonna look bad and it plays bad and stinks to the high heavens right now.”
