This has not been a banner few weeks for New York baseball. Back in June, specifically June 13-18, the Yankees and Mets had simultaneous five-game losing streaks for the first time since August 1996, then they nearly did it again this past week. The last three games of the Yankees’ five-game losing streak from Aug. 1-5 overlapped with the first three games of the Mets’ ongoing seven-game losing streak. The state of New York baseball is such that the two teams almost had simultaneous five-game losing streaks twice in two months after not doing it once in close to 30 years.
“We haven’t played well for quite a bit now and that’s what happens,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters, including MLB.com, after the team’s walk-off loss Sunday (MIL 7, NYM 6). “We can’t be looking at the standings. We got to start getting the job done. That simple.”
The Yankees and Mets, both expected to be World Series contenders entering the season, have been floundering on the field and tumbling down the standings the last few weeks. It hasn’t been pretty either. Neither team seems capable of a normal loss. They’re all deflating. The Mets and Yankees have been two of the worst teams in baseball the last two months and that is not hyperbole. It is a cold hard fact:
The Yankees fell flat again Sunday (HOU 7, NYY 1) and lost a weekend series to the Astros. Trent Grisham’s late homer Saturday gave the club a much-needed win and could have served as a spark. Instead, the Yankees were no-hit into the sixth inning by Jason Alexander on Sunday. The “Seinfeld” jokes outnumbered the quality at-bats by Yankees hitters by a factor of about 1,000.
“The game is littered with dead and buried teams,” Boone said after Sunday’s loss. “We’re in playoff position right now. We’ve been through two bad months where we haven’t performed at a level we need to. Go back the year before, the year before, you can pick out a number of teams that are sitting in a worse position than we are right now that go on a run. We have the people to do that, no doubt in my mind. It’s just sitting here as talk right now. We haven’t been good enough the last two months.”
The Mets, meanwhile, were swept by the juggernaut Brewers this past weekend even though they had a lead in all three games, including a 5-0 lead Sunday. As bad as the Yankees have been (and they’ve been very bad), the Mets have lost 11 of their last 12 games to go from 1 ½ games up on the Phillies in the NL East to 5 ½ games behind. Yeesh.
“We got to go out and do it,” Mendoza said about his team being able to turn their season around (via MLB.com). “We’re going to keep saying it, but the bottom line is we got to go out and do it. I know it’s tough right now. It’s very frustrating. We’re all very frustrated, but you got to keep going. We got to keep going. Nobody said it was going to be easy.”
You don’t play as poorly as the Yankees and Mets have the last two months because one aspect of the team is performing poorly and holding everyone else back. It takes a total team effort to go on an 18-31 or a 20-31 run. Here are the numbers since the cherry-picked date of June 13:
Runs scored per game
3.92 (30th in MLB)
4.58 (14th in MLB)
Runs allowed per game
5.29 (28th)
5.02 (26th)
Position player WAR
4.0 (24th)
6.2 (14th)
Starting pitcher WAR
0.9 (29th)
2.3 (23rd)
Relief pitcher WAR
0.5 (22nd)
-0.2 (26th)
Hitter Clutch
1.23 (3rd)
-2.75 (27th)
Pitcher Clutch
-1.68 (29th)
-1.27 (28th)
Clutch is a fun little stat that compares a player’s or team’s performance in high-leverage situations to itself. Perform better in high-leverage spots than you do at other times, and you’ll score well in Clutch. Perform poorly in high-leverage spots, and your Clutch rating will be low.
The Yankees have been just awful in crunch time since June 13, both their pitchers and hitters. They can’t get a big hit or get a big out. Mets hitters have been really good in high-leverage spots the last few weeks! But they’re still dead last in runs per game since June 13. They’ve been really good in high-leverage plate appearances but haven’t had nearly enough of them.
The two New York teams share so many of the same problems. First and foremost, neither team gets much length from their starting pitchers, putting stress on the bullpens. Yankees starters have gone six innings only three times in their last 24 games. Max Fried has gone six innings once in his last six starts. Carlos Rodón’s done it once in his last seven starts. That’s not nearly enough.
Compared to the Mets though, the Yankees have a rotation of workhorses. A Mets starter has gone six innings only eight times in the team’s last 53 games, and all eight were David Peterson. The last Mets starter other than Peterson to go six innings was Clay Holmes all the way back on June 7. Non-Peterson starters are averaging close to four innings per start since then. Oy vey.
Both bullpens have had more than their fair share of blowups too. It was bullpen meltdown after bullpen meltdown for the Mets in Milwaukee this past weekend. The Yankees, in part due to Boone’s stubbornness with Devin Williams, have let too many late leads slip away. Williams has two blown saves and two losses in his last five outings, yet he was continually used in close games.
And you know what? The stars aren’t playing like stars. Aaron Judge has a .631 OPS since the All-Star break around his 10-day absence with a flexor strain. Jazz Chisholm Jr. has a .564 OPS during that time. Juan Soto has a decidedly un-Soto-like .741 OPS since the All-Star break. Pete Alonso is at .639. Francisco Lindor is at .510! New York’s top hitters sure aren’t playing like it.
The good news is the Yankees and Mets are both still in postseason position. The bad news is both teams are just barely hanging on. Here are the wild card standings entering play Monday:
The Guardians are likely to get the tiebreaker over the Yankees because the season series is over and tied, and the next tiebreaker is record within division, where Cleveland has cleaned up. They’re 22-13 against the AL Central. The Yankees are 14-19 against the AL East. The tiebreaker means that half-game lead over the Guardians for the third wild card spot is even smaller than it appears.
As for the Mets, they are down 1-2 in the season series for the Reds, so they have an uphill climb to secure the tiebreaker. Like the Yankees, their already slim lead for the third wild card spot is even less comfortable than it appears because the tiebreaker math isn’t in their favor. There’s no denying it; making the postseason is no longer a sure thing for the two New York teams.
Bottom line, if Aaron Judge and Max Fried and Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor don’t perform, then the jig is up. There is basically no way for the Yankees and Mets to overcome their best players performing below expectations as badly as they have the last few weeks. Your best players need to be your best players, and that hasn’t been the case for the Yankees and Mets lately.
Otherwise, the path forward is simple. Get more length from the starters, have the bullpen protect a late lead once in a while, and get your star hitters to perform like stars. Easy, right? Easily said, sure, but doing it has been a challenge the last few weeks. If the Mets or Yankees could flip and switch and make it all better, they would have already. These are dire times for New York baseball fans.
“Obviously we are feeling it. We know we have to be better. We have a much higher standard for ourselves and expectations,” Boone said Sunday. “At the same time, we are in control of this. I wholeheartedly believe that we are going to get rolling and turn this thing around. When it does, then you start to build that next layer of confidence where guys are feeding off each other. It’s all talk right now.”