Yankees lose, Bird attacked. Have we reached the bottom?

The Yankees gave their fans a choice to pick from last night. Do you want to hear about the Judge eclipsing Joltin’ Joe or how the bullpen imploded again leading to another horrific loss to a team going the other way in the standings?

The Yankees are now 3-7 over their last ten, only four over .500 for the season, trailing the streaking Red Sox by four and a half games.

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Brewers, who were given a lesser chance than the Yankees to win their Division, are 8-2 over their last ten, have won five straight, putting them at nine over .500 with a four-game lead over the hapless Chicago Cubs in the NL Central. Two teams traveling in different directions.

The Yankees used four relievers in their 9-4 home loss to the Brewers last night. Check the box score if you don’t believe me, not one of them was efficient and one, in particular, Tyler Clippard, was extremely ineffective, earning another blown save to his recent list of achievements for the team. Put the bullpen in the glass almost empty category.

Aaron Judge did hit his 30th home run of the season, a 432 ft. shot to center field to give the Yankees a two-run lead in the fifth inning. And the Yankees newest first baseman, Ji-Man Choi, hit his second home run. For Judge, he has now hit more home runs than any Yankee before him, eclipsing the mark set by team icon, Joe Dimaggio. That goes in the glass more than half full category.

Girardi gets high marks for this one

Here’s another one for the glass-half-full grouping. Noticeably, Joe Girardi removed his starter, Jordan Montgomery, from the game after only 4.1 innings and 71 pitches following a rain delay. Montgomery’s sole mistake during his outing was to Jesus Aguilar, who hit a two-run home run that gave the Brewers a brief 2-1 lead.

If this is an indication that the Yankees are finally coming to grips with the number of innings (87) Montgomery has thrown over his fifteen starts, then this is something positive to take away from a game filled with negatives.

Projected out, Montgomery will amass 190 innings, and this doesn’t take into account additional playoff innings which, hopefully, are on the way. With the All-Star break coming up, Montgomery will now have more than a week’s rest before his next start. Luis Severino, who is scheduled to start today, should receive the same attention from the Yankees.

Has the team bottomed out?

The question before the Yankees is whether or not the team has bottomed out, reaching the point where the only way to go is up. As fans, we hope they have, and the turning point came last night and can be jotted down for future reference, as the game where the bottom was reached.

More from Yanks Go Yard

Once a team in which everything they touched turned to gold, as in the case of a journeyman, Ronald Torreyes, replacing Didi Gregorius and watching how Grandpa CC Sabathia picked up the staff at the beginning of the season.

But of late, gold is not even silver. Tyler Wade is hitting an inauspicious .083 with a .214 OBP since his call-up and Clint Frazier only .188 with a .222 OBP.

Brian Cashman took the plunge in calling these guys up, deviating from his plan giving them (and others) a full season in the minors. And if anything is true, the Yankees may have reached the point where their minor league system has bottomed out, despite the much-heralded depth of the organization.

Cheers turning to boos

The newer Yankees are quickly learning what the veterans on the team already know. Yankees fans are not shy, and they demand excellence from their team. And the smattering of boos heard last night are only a sampling of what is to come if the team can’t turn this thing around.

And to make matters worse, a few sportswriters are turning their venom on the team, and in this case, a particular player, Greg Bird, whose “heart” was put into question due to his inability to bounce back from a mysterious ankle injury. ESPN provides the writer’s quote:

"The newspaper report quoted a “Yankee insider” saying, “You really wonder what’s with this guy. You’d think with Judge and Sanchez, the guys he came through the system with, doing so well up here he’d want to be a part of this. Apparently not.”"

Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I see “Yankees insider” as the source of a quote, I can only imagine the writer making up anything he wants just to get a headline, and therefore, is dismissable and not worthy of further comment or attention.

Be that as it may, though, the point is that a story like this would never have been dreamed of a month or two ago when the Yankees were riding high. To his credit, Jor Girardi immediately went on the attack defending his player, even though the damage had already been done.

Turning it around

As Derek Jeter always said, the only game on the schedule that counts is the one you are playing today. Jeter was able to keep things simple that way, but the Yankees do need to take that page from his book and run with it.

Luis Severino (5-4 3.52) gets the call today, and Masahiro Tanaka (7-7 5.25) follows tomorrow to close out the homestand against the Brewers, the first half of the season before making way for the annual All-Star Game festivities.

Yankees: 90 wins was once a stroll, now it’s an all-out sprint

In the early part of the 2017 season, it seemed that the Yankees were a lock for 90 wins, the mark that usually secures a spot in the playoffs. Not so fast.

A win today is the first step forward for the Yankees. They need length from both starters as the bullpen is not only depleted and tired, but they can’t be counted on to do their job. Brian Cashman will take steps to fix that, but for now, this is what they have to win the only game that counts – the one that starts today at 1:05 PM EST at Yankee Stadium.