Yankees: NYY better hope they don’t face the Rays in the postseason

The Yankees simply can’t hit against the Rays. A postseason series would be a nightmare.

The Tampa Bay Rays took the Houston Astros to five games in the 2019 ALDS for a reason — they’re good. The difference between the Astros and the New York Yankees? Well, the Yankees can’t really hit against the Rays in 2020, so a playoff series between these two would NOT be fun to watch for Bombers fans.

Look, things can change, but if we were to enter a postseason battle with Tampa tomorrow, even at full strength, nothing has proved to us this year that the Yankees would win. And when you factor in New York’s inefficiency at the plate specifically against the Rays, it’s all the more problematic.

Hitting home runs is awesome, but you have to produce runs with runners in scoring position, most notably on the biggest stage, and to say the Yankees have failed to do that against their division rivals is an understatement.

Throw in another 2-for-6 over the past two nights. That’s 7-for-57 on the year, which ups the average to … .123! Huge.

Honestly, you’d think they’d be better at this just by chance. It’s like filling out your scantron with all the same letters. Probability-wise, you gotta do better than 1-for-10, right? RIGHT?!

Apparently not! And you know what’s even crazier? The Rays’ bullpen is absolutely decimated by injuries right now — some of their best arms, too. Jose Alvarado, Yonny Chirinos, Chaz Roe, Jalen Beeks, Oliver Drake, Ryan Yarbrough and Nick Anderson are all hurt at the moment. Chirinos and Beeks will miss the entire year due to TJ surgery, but that means their bullpen is realistically out five guys right now, and we can’t manage to capitalize?

As we know, when things are going bad offensively for the Yankees, they go really bad. They’ve averaged 3.2 runs per game against the Rays in 10 games this year and that’s with an eight-run performance in one of their two wins (yup, they’re 2-8 against Tampa).

Throw in the Rays’ starting rotation, which the Yankees can’t really hit either, and we’ll have another repeat of what we watched so far this year. Even when the Yankees were fully healthy before the wheels came off, they lost three of four in Tampa and Gerrit Cole was knocked around in the one win.

Bring us literally anybody else.

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