Yankees searching for answers after 3rd straight shutout
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees’ offense is drifting toward uncharted territory — and not in a good way.
The team tied a franchise record by getting shut out for the third straight game Tuesday night, when the Yankees went 0 for 10 with runners on base in a 4-0 loss to the Los Angeles Angels.
“Obviously, we’re not getting the job done,” outfielder Cody Bellinger said. “We’re not getting a lot of baserunners. We’re not causing traffic. We’ve got to keep going and wake up tomorrow and we’ve got to get going.”
The Yankees have been blanked in three consecutive games seven times in their 123-year history — but only three times in the last 50 years, most recently from Sept. 22-24, 2016.
The last major league team to get shut out in four straight games was the Kansas City Royals in September 2017.
“It’s a little bit foreign for us to go through this for a few days,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said.
New York has lost five in a row and mustered only five runs in its past six games, including a 1-0 win last Thursday in Kansas City. The last time the Yankees scored five runs or fewer in a six-game span was August 1968.
In the past six games, New York is batting .164.
Giancarlo Stanton is 4 for 8 in his first two games since returning from injuries to both elbows. But lineup mainstays Bellinger (.152 in his last eight games), Paul Goldschmidt (.164 in his last 17 games) and Aaron Judge (.125 in his last seven games) are all mired in extended slumps.
Judge, who began the night leading the American League in all three Triple Crown categories, was booed following strikeouts in the sixth and eighth innings.
Boone tinkered with his lineup — batting rookie Jasson Domínguez first and dropping Goldschmidt to sixth — but it didn’t yield results for the Yankees, who were limited to four hits and got just three runners to second base against Kyle Hendricks and a trio of relievers.
Boone implored the Yankees to remain patient at the plate but acknowledged they might have been pressing Tuesday, when they went up against the soft-tossing Hendricks on an unseasonably cool 67-degree night.
“You want to be the guy (to) kind of get the hit, get it going,” Boone said. “But that’s where the patience comes in and that’s where just you can’t obsess on the result. You can’t go up there (like) ‘I gotta get a hit, I gotta do this.’ It’s got to be, ‘I gotta go take a tough at-bat.’”
Even with the slump, the Yankees still rank among the top five teams in the majors in runs (370), homers (109) and OPS (.784). They finished among the top five in all three categories in five of Boone’s first seven seasons as manager.
“It’s been a little struggle the last couple days, which unfortunately is going to happen,” Boone said. “It’s just always shocking to see our group not score runs, right? Especially a few days in a row now.
“We’ve just got to focus on the little things — think small, big things come.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
By JERRY BEACH
Associated Press
