The Yankees, who might miss the playoffs if they don’t start to pick it up, won a game in Texas on Wednesday afternoon. They won it because David Bednar, one of the new closers — there’s a bunch — threw his 42nd pitch of a five-out save and struck out Adolis Garcia and his team hung on to win, 3-2. The Yankees are still closer to fourth place than first place in the American League East. But at least they finally won their first game since a trade deadline that was supposed to make them better, and hasn’t.
They did stay ahead of the Rangers in the wild card race. Didn’t fall any further behind the Blue Jays. Now they come home for a series with the Astros, and for Old Timers’ Weekend, having at least gotten a game after five straight losses during which a team that was as close as it could come to being the best in baseball last year — by making the World Series — has looked like one of the worst. And sloppiest.
Put it this way: By getting this game off the Rangers, the Yankees had 25 wins since June 1. It meant one more than the White Sox had won over the same period. The record for the Yankees since they were 17 games over .500 on June 12 is now 19-29. That is nearly a third of a season. Still: The manager, Aaron Boone, stubbornly insists that he believes this Yankee team can be as good as any he’s had since taking over for Joe Girardi after Brian Cashman got tired of Girardi even though Girardi had just taken an upstart Yankee team to Game 7 of the ALCS.
“In a lot of ways, I feel like this is potentially the best team we’ve had here over the last several years,” Boone said on “Talkin’ Yanks” the other day.
He is allowed to think that. And Yankee fans are allowed to think he is watching a completely different movie than they are. Of course there is still time for them to prove that Boone is right about this group. But if you don’t think he is feeling the pressure, look at the way he had to go the distance with Bednar on Wednesday afternoon. In a lot of ways, it was as big a moment as Bednar — who spent a career pitching on slob teams in Pittsburgh — has ever had. But in a week that felt like a full-blown bullpen panic, Boone thought Bednar gave him his best chance. And was right. Barely.
So the Yankees are 1-5 since Cashman traded for seven new guys in the run-up to the trade deadline last Thursday. The Mets have the same record since the deadline. They look like scrubs, too, right now. With the same record the Yankees have even after David Stearns got them two fancy new relievers and a new center fielder. Local fans are starting to worry that maybe $300 million doesn’t buy you nearly what it used to.
The Mets just got swept by the Guardians. And nearly got no-hit by Gavin Williams, who stuffed them for 8.1 innings before Juan Soto roused himself from his recent slumber and hit one off Williams over the center field wall. Yankee fans aren’t so happy with Boone? Mets fans aren’t so happy with their $765 million right fielder, who at the present time has three more RBI (63) than Anthony Volpe.
Last October, the Yankees and Mets were in baseball’s Final Four, before both ended up losing to the Dodgers. The Mets got two games off the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. The Yankees got one in the World Series. But both teams came into this season with high hopes about going all the way. The Mets took Soto away from the Yankees. The Yankees lost Gerrit Cole to Tommy John surgery, but replaced him with Max Fried. People keep saying that Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t want to spend enough to win. Really? Over the past few years he’s allowed Cashman to spend $750 million on three starters:
Cole.
Carlos Rodon (who once again didn’t make it out of the sixth inning on Wednesday).
Fried.
This past week both teams looked like nothing more than overpriced mediocrities at a time when all the reinforcements were supposed to have turned things around for both of them. The Yankees, in their own makeover mode, got a third baseman in Ryan McMahon, two infielders in Jose Caballero and Amed Rosario, a right-handed hitting outfielder in Austin Slater, three closers: Bednar, Camilo Doval, Jake Bird, who really only lasted a couple of fat pitches before being banished to Scranton.
Since that time, Yankee fans have witnessed the worst loss of the season — 13-12 to the Marlins last Friday — and one that felt like almost as much of a gut punch in Texas when Josh Jung walked everybody off with a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 10th. That was right after Boone sent out his pitching coach and essentially iced Bird while discussing whether they should pitch to Wyatt Langford or Jung.
So now the Yankees come home for three games against an Astros team that has ruined an awful lot for them over the past decade. And get a chance, at Yankee Stadium, to hit the reset button and try to start looking like the team that the manager insists they can be.
The Mets? Before the Phillies played on Wednesday night, the Mets were three games in the loss column behind them, and suddenly in the third wild card slot in the National League. They’re no sure thing to make the postseason, either. You know how far ahead of the Reds they were after the near no-hitter? Three in the loss column.
Still plenty of time for both New York teams to start making this season look like last season. But Yogi had it right, as usual: Sure gets late early around here.
