Ben Rice can't do it alone: Yankees face elimination after another offensive letdown
The Yankees’ dreadful defense in Game 2 is certainly the headlining woe. It’s the one that forced Cam Schlittler to throw stress-laden pitches in the first inning that doubtless impacted the rest of his outing. And it’s the one that helped the Rays to three unearned runs.
But in the wake of the Yankees’ 5-2 loss Monday night at Tropicana Field, there’s another culprit also pushing them toward elimination:
We need to talk about the offense.
It’s every Yankee fan’s October nightmare: the pinstriped bats have gone cold and there’s no Aaron Judge coming to save them, at least in this series. He’s out with a calf injury. After a splurge against the fading Red Sox in the Wild Card Series, the Bronx Bombers have turned that nickname into a punch line of sorts in this best-of-five AL Division Series against Tampa Bay.
“Whatever it takes, we’ve got to do it offensively and we’ve gotta be able to score some runs and do a better job of preventing (them,)” Aaron Boone said in the postgame news conference room.
It can only get better, right? In two games against the Rays, the Yankees have scored exactly twice. Both runs came in Game 2, when Ben Rice slammed two solo home runs. They have all of five hits — Rice’s home runs, two doubles by Austin Wells and a single by Cody Bellinger. They are 5-for-58 in the series (.086) with a .145 on-base percentage, .224 slugging and .369 OPS.
It’s the fewest hits and fewest runs of any team in Division Series play. The Yankees, who drew the eighth-most walks in baseball during the regular season, aren’t even doing that — they have two walks in each game so far.
They have just four plate appearances with runners in scoring position in the series and are 0-for-2 with two walks.
Credit where it’s due — the Rays are pitching very well, from Drew Rasmussen in Game 1 to Freddy Peralta and the bullpen in Game 2.
And that is certainly part of the reason why, when they’ve had chances against Tampa Bay, the Yankees have missed. Wells foolishly tried to stretch an easy double into a triple in Game 1 and was easily thrown out, burying the only Yankee scoring chance against Rasmussen.
In Game 2, Bellinger, who batted .340 with runners in scoring position during the season and hit a big home run in the Boston series, came up with the bases loaded in the fifth inning and mashed a ball to center. It traveled 405 feet, but it was nothing more than a loud out, a ball with an expected batting average, per Statcast, of .760 that was caught on the warning track.
Boone noted that Bellinger’s ball, a few feet either way, could’ve been a bases-clearing, series-changing double. And it was just one of six balls the Yankees hit 100-plus mph in Game 2, two fewer than the Rays.
“I thought we started to put together some really good at-bats, especially in the fifth inning where we chased Peralta and Belli puts a good swing on it, hits it to the fence,” Boone said. “That’s unfortunate there.”
Rice, though, is doing real damage. He has driven in eight of the 20 runs the Yankees have scored in the postseason and he has four home runs, which leads all playoff hitters. He’s the first Yankee to have more than one multi-homer game in the same postseason, according to Sarah Langs of MLB.com. He’s batting .467 with an 1.889 OPS.
The Yanks will need some teammates to join him to get back in this series. It’s already a daunting assignment: According to Langs, in all best-of-five postseason series, teams that go up, 2-0, win 89 percent of the time (83-of-93). In the current 2-2-1 home format, the team that wins the first two at home wins the series 92 percent of the time.
There’s a lot to clean up. The defense better be good Wednesday night in Game 3 with groundball artist Max Fried starting for the Yankees.
And Rice can’t be the only one raking, either. The Yankees haven’t shown they can score enough against the Rays.
