Yankees blown out in embarrassing 11-3 home loss to Cleveland – Pinstripe Alley

What can we even say about this game? The Yankees were thoroughly outclassed less than 24 hours after a dominant shutout win, ceding 11 runs to the 24th-best offense in baseball. It was a debacle that was thankfully over by the fifth inning, so hopefully everyone got to go outside and enjoy an afternoon that I, mercilessly, spent recapping a terrible loss. The Yankees lost 11-3, putting them behind the Red Sox and Blue Jays in the Wild Card standings, as both division rivals won on Saturday. New York now sits half a game behind Toronto (again).

I’m curious what people think of Luis Gil on the whole. He shows flashes of being a real starter — striking out two hitters in the first inning — but the whole package seems to indicate a bullpen role for him. Specifically, his command comes and goes, especially on his secondary offerings:

The misses with the fastball up aren’t great, but I think the Yankees have a pretty good track record of getting guys to locate that pitch — Clay Holmes, Jameson Taillon, etc — but that slider, which was supposed to be further along than his changeup … boy, Gil has no idea where that ball is going.

Missing up is a big problem, since no hitter is fooled by a slider eight inches up and out of the zone. The sliders start out down as well, rather than breaking from within the zone to out of it. It got worse as the day went along, too, which indicates to me either fatigue, or a mechanical challenge that, as Gil’s delivery gets out of whack, will make him struggle to deliver pitches that look like strikes.

The fifth inning was the real disaster for the Yankees, as Joey Gallo left the game with neck tightness, Gary Sánchez dropped a popup, and seven of the next eight hitters reached base, with a walk, single, two HBPs, two doubles, and a dinger putting the game at 8-0 and well out of reach. Albert Abreu was on the hook for the majority of the disaster, and if you thought Gil’s command was off, well, Albert Abreu just left everything over the middle of the plate:

Andrew Heaney chipped in with his quota of two home runs per relief appearance. But really, you can’t talk about this game without talking about how, once again, the Yankee offense was a series of wet farting sounds.

They actually put multiple men on in the first, before Aaron Judge bounced into a double play. They then didn’t have multiple men on again until the sixth … when Judge bounced into a double play. Don’t feel too bad about the GIDP though. They also had a caught stealing to end the second, when Gleyber Torres was nabbed with two outs, and four strikeouts against no walks in the second, third, fourth, and fifth innings combined,

Giancarlo Stanton went deep in the seventh, his 30th of the campaign and second 30-homer season in pinstripes. Luke Voit added a two-run shot in the eighth to bring the deficit down to … eight, but we’ve gotta find positives where we can. For what it’s worth, since the trade deadline, Anthony Rizzo has a .757 OPS and Voit an .891 OPS.

Now we know the defensive edge that Rizzo has, but this is a team struggling to put together a consistent offensive performance, and they have an elite level hitter who they continually leave out of the lineup. Put Giancarlo Stanton in the outfield every day, put Luke Voit at DH every day, and let Anthony Rizzo sit more often because he’s fundamentally not as good a hitter as those other two guys, and stop being too cute with uber-talented hitters.

Anyway, tomorrow’s the rubber match of the series, with Gerrit Cole on the hill. I’d sure like to say that the Yankees have a great chance to win this series, but with this offense, who knows? You can bet that Cole will be much-watch TV, but the Yankee lineup might be emetic. The matinee starts at 1:05pm Eastern.

Box Score

Update on Gallo