The pitchers are starting to believe and the hitters are feeling it. Yankees manager Aaron Boone knows this team isn’t where they expected to be — yet. This weekend will be telling. After dismissing the Royals 8-1 at the Stadium on Thursday, the Yankees head up to Fenway for the first time this year to face the team that embarrassed them in the Bronx three weeks ago.
The Yankees (40-34) go into that series having won two straight and seven of their last nine.
This weekend will tell if that was the turning point that Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton thought it was. Or is this a team that has just continues to play inconsistently as Gerrit Cole said? It will tell the front office: Is this is a team that can go on a run in the second half and is worth investing in, or are they a team that will continue to live on the edge?
After that Red Sox series, the players had some tough talks and looked in the mirror, Judge said. They bottomed out the next week getting swept by the Phillies and falling 8.5 games back. They’ve fought their way back to four games behind the Red Sox in the American League East, with the Rays and Red Sox yet to play Thursday night.
The most notable change was on display Thursday. The Bombers put up eight runs on the Royals behind a three-run homer by resurgent catcher Gary Sanchez, who hit home runs in back-to-back games for the third time this season. They also have a healthy Luke Voit, who hit his second homer in the three game back from his stint on the injured list, back in the lineup, giving them some offensive production from first base. Judge also hit his first home run since June 9.
“I think we’re finding our way a little bit. I still don’t think we’re where we’re going to be as a team. It’s certainly been a grind this year. But I don’t think there’s any question that, over the last couple weeks, the offense is just starting to slowly but surely get a little bit better,” Aaron Boone said. “Even though we’ve had a lot of games now where we’ve scored four and five and six runs where it’s been games where we’ve had a chance to score 10 or 12 runs, we just still haven’t had that breakout, where we break it open with these big hits.
“But I do feel like the group at-bats night in and night out are getting tougher and getting heavier,” the Yankees manager continued. “But more and more, we’re making it tough on the opposing pitcher, and ultimately that’s the kind of offense we want to be. And hopefully we can start breaking through more often and starting to put some real strong offensive games on the board.”
The Yankees were hitting .228 and averaging just under four runs a game before losing that series. Since then, the Bombers are averaging 5.5 runs per game. They are hitting .259 with 29 homers in that span, which also happens to almost perfectly coincide with when MLB announced it was going to start cracking down on the illegal sticky stuff that pitchers have been using to make their pitches nastier.
And like the rest of the league, the Yankees’ pitchers effectiveness has dropped. In the first 60 games of the year, the Yankees pitchers had a 3.35 ERA with 518 strikeouts. In the 14 games since, even after Jameson Taillon’s season high-tying 6.1 innings of one-run baseball on Thursday, they have put up a 4.56 ERA with 115 strikeouts in 124.1 innings pitched.
Cole said he was encouraged by the team’s play of late, citing that they have had come-back wins in six of their last eight games, He, however, wanted to see more consistency.
“I think it’s a good point by Gerrit. I go back to the ‘talk is cheap’ mode. We’re in the fight where we’re in the grind of all this right now. ... I don’t believe we’ve reached anything close to our peak of what we could be as a club,” Boone said. “But there’s no question, I feel like we’re digging out of that. We’re getting better.”
