CHICAGO — Two hours before the first pitch of Monday’s 12-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone was asked if it was challenging to enter a series against a historically bad team, where the expectation was a sweep and anything less than that would be catastrophic.
“When we don’t win, it’s usually catastrophic,” Boone quipped. “When we do win, it is what it is. We’re on a mission to try and be a great team and to be a championship team. Most of us have been around long enough to know that every night you step foot on a big-league diamond, you’re capable of losing, you’re capable of winning. If we play well, we should put ourselves in a good position.”
Boone is right that Yankees observers tend to treat the 162-game season as if it were 162 separate seasons, each representing a single game. He usually laments that when the Yankees play poorly, it’s just part of the ebbs and flows of the season. A loss to the White Sox is just one game out of 162, but it is still beyond inexcusable.
The Yankees are in a tight division race with the Baltimore Orioles for the American League East title and a bye in the wild-card round. Arriving in Chicago should have theoretically been seen as three free wins on the schedule. After all, the 29-91 White Sox are on pace to become the worst team ever, breaking the 1962 New York Mets’ record of 120 losses in a season. The situation is so bleak at Guaranteed Rate Field these days that a fan in a White Sox jersey seated in front of the press box screamed, “The White Sox are winning!? Woo!” At the time, Chicago led 2-1 in the first inning.
seeing double(s) pic.twitter.com/5elLtWymXQ
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) August 13, 2024
It got worse from there for the Yankees.
Luis Gil lasted just four innings, giving up four runs on seven hits and two walks. Reliever Enyel De Los Santos, one of the three players the Yankees added at the trade deadline, gave up six runs in the seventh inning. De Los Santos has allowed 10 runs in 6 1/3 innings pitched since joining the Yankees. He needed 48 pitches to get through 1 2/3 innings, a possible precursor to getting designated for assignment.
Since June 1, the Yankees’ 4.48 ERA is the fifth-worst in MLB. Boone believes the Yankees have everything they need to be one of the league’s best groups.
“I still think we have a chance to have an excellent bullpen,” Boone said pregame. “I feel good about the guys we have down there. I really do. … I feel like we have the makings to be really, really good down there, but we got to go out and do it.”
It wasn’t just the results of Monday’s game that ended poorly for the Yankees. Jazz Chisholm Jr., the main deadline acquisition for the Yankees, left with an elbow injury after sliding into home plate. He will undergo an MRI on Tuesday after initial X-rays were negative. Chisholm said he wasn’t “super” concerned about his elbow, but he felt soreness.
“We went through all the tests and all the tests that we’ve done in here have been pretty positive,” Chisholm said. “I still feel it a little bit, but I think that we’re going to be good.”
Chisholm was one of the lone bright spots for the Yankees. He finished 2-for-3 and scored from second on a ball that barely left the infield. Chisholm’s slide home was the play where he injured his elbow; he didn’t know it was bothering him until the adrenaline wore off.
The White Sox have scored double-digit runs just twice this season: Monday against the Yankees, a season-high, and in late June against the woeful Colorado Rockies. The White Sox had a season-high 18 hits, and it was the first time all season that they had won a game by 10 or more runs. Chicago came into Monday’s game 3-27 over its last 30 games, which included an American League-tying 21-game losing streak. None of that ineptitude mattered for the Yankees on Monday.
“Every time you lose, it’s a missed opportunity,” Boone said after the game. “We’re playing for a lot every freaking day. It sucks to lose.”
After a 15-25 stretch that lasted from mid-June to the end of July, August was seen as the soft spot in the schedule for the Yankees. They’ve failed to take advantage. They’re 5-5 against the Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers and White Sox. The Orioles have struggled lately, too, giving the Yankees a chance to pull away with the division, but they haven’t been able to do so. Losses like the one Monday, despite the Yankees saying it’s just another day, can be backbreaking down the stretch.
The Yankees had numerous chances to pull away against the White Sox. They left 16 runners on base and finished 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position. It’s the second time in franchise history (the other time coming Sept. 6, 1912) that they had at least 2o base runners and scored two or fewer runs, according to Stathead’s Katie Sharp.
One of those moments with runners on base was a head-scratcher. After Anthony Volpe and DJ LeMahieu led off the fourth inning with back-to-back walks, Alex Verdugo, the team’s leadoff hitter, stepped to the plate. The Yankees were down 2-1 and had already stranded six runners on base. Seemingly desperate to put two runners on in scoring position against the worst team in the sport, Verdugo squared around to bunt, a call he said he made on his own, against a pitcher who had already allowed six walks. It did not go well. Verdugo popped out to White Sox starter Ky Bush.
“I kind of didn’t really want to bunt, but I was already kind of out there,” Verdugo said. I just got a little lazy with it and popped it up. That’s, like, the first bunt I’ve ever popped up. It happens.”
The “we’ll-get-’em-tomorrow” mindset the Yankees have displayed over the past two months doesn’t feel like the same team that started the season barking like dogs after home runs and actively seeking to crush the souls of its opponents. A humiliating loss to the White Sox should be the point in the calendar where the Yankees go into overdrive, but they’re not treating it as the wake-up call it should be.
“No, I just think it’s a normal day,” Verdugo said. “Another day where it just happens that we’re on the tough side of it. It’s baseball, right? I mean, yeah, they’re one of the worst teams if you want to put it that way, but these guys are still big leaguers. They can still have days where they’re clicking.”
The White Sox are 4-27 in their last 31 games. They have not had many days where they’re “clicking,” but the Yankees always find a way to downplay it when they struggle and chalk it up to just another ordinary loss in a 162-game season.
(Photo of Anthony Volpe: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)
