Yankees: Former manager Joe Girardi weighs in on Gary Sanchez

This time last year, former Yankees skipper Joe Girardi was trying his best to get through to Gary Sanchez. Girardi again is offering advice to the scuffling backstop, only this time from the comfort of the MLB Network studios.

Gary Sanchez wouldn’t listen to former Yankees manager Joe Girardi during the 2017 season, so what makes anyone think The Kraken will heed Girardi’s warning now?

Following a performance to forget during Wednesday’s 8-2 loss to the A’s — one in which Sanchez allowed two past balls and was involved in two wild pitches, all in the first inning — Girardi, the man that managed the Yanks to a 910-710 record from 2008-2017, offered a bit of advice for his former pupil.

Appearing on MLB Network’s “High Heat” with Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Girardi believes Sanchez’s issues stem from “his base.”

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"“Over the next four weeks, I’d try to fix his base,” Girardi said. “It’s his base, the left knee collapses and he’s not in a position to catch some of these balls and block some of these balls… Until that base is fixed and sometimes it’s hard to do during the season, he’s going to struggle.”"

Cue the bad Meghan Trainor jokes. With Girardi pulling no punches, and why should he — it’s his job to offer analysis, the Yankees would be wise to try out some of what the former 15-year big league catcher has to say.

Sanchez now has 13 passed balls on the season, tying Martin Maldonado of the Astros for the league lead (not a stat you want). And although Sanchez had a total of 16 passed balls in 2017, that was in 881 innings behind the plate (104 games).

This year, with two DL stints under his belt, El Gary has only played 507 innings (59 games) while donning the tools of ignorance. Though his errors committed are down from 13 last season to four, thus far — Sanchez is throwing out baserunners 25 percent of the time as compared to 38 percent in ’17.

While the most logical dip in production can and will be attributed to the two groin injuries, current manager Aaron Boone made it clear Sanchez was working on his conditioning and defense during rehab.

Just five games in after more than a month away from the team, Sanchez will need to pick up the pace to silence the critics and assure himself a spot as THE catcher in the AL Wild Card Game.

"“He’s in there because of … the potential of his bat,” Girardi said. “But right now, he had a tough game with [Luis] Severino. You can have those as a catcher, and you start to tense up and it makes it even worse.”"