TORONTO — This mega-eventful Yankees season, one the franchise hopes will be regarded as a turning point, seems destined to feature bookends of ineptitude.
Terrible offense got them into the soup. Terrible offense has cooked their goose.
New city, new opponent, eerily familiar optics Friday night at Rogers Centre. The Yankees suffered their second straight shutout loss, 9-0 to the Blue Jays, to decrease their already infinitesimal chances of qualifying for the postseason, as they were officially eliminated from American League East contention and dropped four games behind the Tigers in the AL wild-card race. On Thursday night, the Yankees dropped a 2-0 decision to the Rays.
“The best teams find a way to push through it and to do what they need to do this time of year,” Brett Gardner said. “Unfortunately, we came in here and didn’t score any runs tonight.”
In April, the Yankees ranked last in the American League with 74 runs scored in 22 games. In September, they rank last with 77 runs scored in 21 games. Gary Sanchez, a member of the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders in April, can provide only so much of a difference by himself.
Yankees starter Bryan Mitchell, like Luis Cessa on Thursday, provided a surprisingly competitive outing, working through early trouble to give his teammates a chance to prevail. However, whereas Luis Severino relieved Cessa on Thursday and contributed two shutout innings, affording the Yankees a chance until the end, Blake Parker inherited a 3-0 hole in the seventh inning and immediately desecrated it, allowing four runs, and Ben Heller permitted two more in the eighth, and manager Joe Girardi angrily cut short his postgame news conference when pressed on why he went to Parker instead of the more reliable Adam Warren.
It probably wouldn’t have made a difference, given the meekness of the Yankees’ offense against Toronto starter Francisco Liriano and three relievers. These guys have been stranding teammates as repeatedly and painfully as Sumner Sloan did to Diane on “Cheers.” This time, they hit 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position and left six guys hanging.
“We just weren’t able to put much together,” Girardi said.
Really, you could have watched the first inning to get the gist of this one and then switched over to the Mets game, or “The Exorcist” on FOX. The Yankees loaded the bases with two outs in the top of the first, only for Chase Headley to strike out. Then the Blue Jays loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the first, and Troy Tulowitzki delivered a two-run single. Game over, for all intents and purposes.
Sanchez? He, of course, was the Yankees’ best hitter, ripping a ground-rule double to left-center field in the first, advancing Gardner from second to third with a flyout to deep center field in the third and stroking a single to center field in the sixth. He owns a ridiculous .337/.413/.738 slash line. Nevertheless, the Yankees managed just one other hit, a Jacoby Ellsbury single in the third, so they now bring an (un)impressive, 18-inning scoreless streak into Saturday afternoon’s contest.
It’s all over but the math now. The Yankees delivered far more highlights, and a lot more fun, after the non-waivers trade deadline than they did before, and you can’t peg their entire downfall on their bats. Last weekend at Fenway Park, their pitchers betrayed their offense.
Overall, though, you blame the run-scoring unit. The Yankees’ 644 runs tie them with the Rays for 12th place in the AL, while their 666 runs allowed place them fifth in the league.
“You can’t win if you don’t score,” Gardner said.
The Yankees have players at every position under control for next year, and they must determine whether that projected lineup can contend. They’ll remember that, even after a dramatic face-lift, their offense let them down at the end … just as it did at the beginning.