ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The Yankees’ latest summer swoon has reached a familiar stage: The pitchforks coming out for Aaron Boone.
And though much of the fan outrage lately has been centered around Boone, whose 5-3 loss to the Rays on Tuesday night was the club’s 17th defeat in their past 23 games, general manager Brian Cashman offered him a vote of confidence before the series opener against the Rays.
“Obviously he works extremely hard,” Cashman said after making the trip to Tropicana Field because of the team’s struggles. “He’s very well-connected with these guys. He’s charged every day with pushing the right buttons the best he can with what he’s got. I think he’s navigating that as well as he possibly can.
“It was a tidal wave of success here for the first two months and then here, as we closed out June and entered July, we’ve hit a really rough patch for an extended period of time. Ultimately it all comes together with what our current record is, but we gotta be playing better than we currently are right now as an entire unit.”
The Yankees had the best record in baseball on June 14 at 50-22. Since then, they are 5-16 entering Wednesday’s game, which was the majors’ worst record during that span.
In that time, the Yankees have gone from holding a 3.5-game lead atop the AL East to trailing the Orioles by three games. They entered Wednesday at the top of the AL wild card standings but with the Twins (1.5 games back), Red Sox (3.5 games back) and Royals (5.5 games back) suddenly nipping at their heels.
Boone, who is in the final year of his contract, took responsibility Tuesday night when asked what he could do as manager to help the Yankees snap out of their prolonged funk.
“It starts with me,” Boone said. “I filter in through the coaches and it’s about us trying to get these guys prepared the best we can, setting a tone with how we present ourselves. But it’s on us as coaches to put our players in the best position possible to go out there and be successful.
“We got to continue to try to do that to the best of our ability and trust that the ball’s going to start to bounce our way a little bit and we can get it rolling here. It starts on that bump and we gotta keep at it.”
The Yankees’ 55-38 record on Wednesday morning was still the majors’ fifth-best. FanGraphs had their playoff odds at 97.1 percent, while Baseball Reference had them with a 96.6 percent chance of getting in.
But their current nosedive has been ugly.
Though the Yankees have dealt with injuries during this stretch, most notably to Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo, their biggest problem has been the starting pitching.
The rotation had the majors’ lowest ERA through June 14 at 2.77, but since then has the majors’ highest ERA at 7.04, which got worse with Carlos Rodon’s latest clunker Tuesday night.