Yankees eke out a win, but team needs a thunderbolt to strike

The Yankees eked out a win last night behind strong pitching that offset another night of a flailing offense. Make no mistake, though; this team needs a jolt, a thunderbolt wake-up call. Something like this…….

The Yankees may have won a battle last night, eking out a 2-1 win over the Cleveland Indians, but they are losing the war. Every hitter in their lineup struck out at least once, and fifteen of their twenty-seven outs never saw a bat touch the ball. Four batters struck out twice and one three times.

At one point during the YES telecast, John Flaherty observed Aaron Judge flailing at a pitch with no exaggeration that was two feet outside, and said so. Michael Kaye corrected him saying, “It’s the whole team.” Save, for Didi Gregorius, who was inserted as the clean-up hitter in yet another Girardi experiment to shake things up, Kaye is dead-on right.

The Yankees are not hitting, and it’s costing them. But it’s the way they are not hitting that is disturbing. And more significantly, who’s not hitting.

The Monday Morning Quarterbacking has already started with charges being levied at Brian Cashman saying he did a splendid job of invigorating the pitching at the trade deadline, but nary a move to bring in position players.

Lucas Duda and Jonathan LeCroy were both available and snapped up by the Rays and Diamondbacks. Cashman claims he did everything possible with Duda, but the Mets and Sandy Alderson refused to deal with the Yankees. Maybe so, but it’s also true that Cashman always gets his man as in the case of Sonny Gray.

The time has come for a few changes……..