Tag: aaron boone

Yankees’ Harrison Bader may join Yankees by Sept. 20

If all goes well, the Yankees may be able to dust off a new center fielder on Sept. 20.

Harrison Bader, who has not played a game with the Yankees since he was acquired from the Cardinals in the Jordan Montgomery trade, is expected to start a rehab assignment Sunday with Double-A Somerset.

Manager Aaron Boone said Bader, who has been out since late June with plantar fasciitis, will be Somerset’s designated hitter Sunday in Hartford, Conn., then will begin outfield work Tuesday.

“It’ll probably be at least a week,” the manager said Saturday before the Yankees beat the Rays, 10-3, in The Bronx. “But then if we get through that week, and the build-up is going fine, he could be in play when we start the homestand [Sept. 20 against the Pirates].”

Bader said there is “definitely discomfort” in his right foot, but he has been told he cannot further injure the foot by playing on it. The Yankees acquired the reigning NL Gold Glove center fielder knowing they would have to wait for Bader to get healthy, but they saw his defense as an eventual way to spell Aaron Judge in center.

Harrison Bader works out in the outfield before the Yankees’ 10-3 win over the Rays.
N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg

The prolonged struggles of Aaron Hicks — and just about the entirety of the Yankees’ offense aside from Judge — makes any hitter welcome, even if Bader might not be ready yet.

“I’m not trying to get my timing back. I’m not trying to feel comfortable in the box,” said Bader, who posted a .673 OPS in 72 games with St. Louis. “I’m just trying to go and just understand that I can physically do something so I can come up here and play ball.”

Montgomery has gone 5-0 with a 1.45 ERA in seven starts for a Cardinals club that is running away with the NL Central. Bader, who said he only has been getting reps in center field, has had to watch his new club without being able to help.

“It’s definitely frustrating. I would say it’s more challenging than anything though,” said Bader, who was trying to find the bright side. “I’m happy that I now have a new set of tools to learn how to take care of my feet properly to make sure this never happens again.”

The Bronxville native has been a Yankee for nearly six weeks and has not been able to suit up, but he believes the wait will be over soon.

If he returns Sept. 20, he would have 16 regular season games left to make a difference.

“I couldn’t be more excited. I couldn’t be more positive,” the 28-year-old said. “I can’t wait to be in pinstripes finally. It’s been so long.”

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Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton exits early, but X-rays negative

A second straight Yankees win Monday did not come without another injury concern.

Giancarlo Stanton fouled multiple balls off his foot and ankle in the sixth inning of a 5-2 win over the Twins, and while he stayed in the game to finish the at-bat, Aaron Hicks pinch hit for him in the eighth inning.

X-rays were negative, according to Aaron Boone, but the manager was noncommittal about Stanton being back in the lineup Tuesday.

“We’ll just see what we got,” Boone said.

Boone and a trainer paid a visit to Stanton during the sixth-inning at-bat after he fouled another ball out of play and came up hobbling. He remained in the game and grounded out.

Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton (27) is checked on by manager Aaron Boone (17) and a trainer.
Bill Kostroun/New York Post

“I think it was when he was planting, it was just bothering him,” Boone said. “But nothing more.”

Stanton is less than two weeks removed from missing 28 games with left Achilles tendinitis, but Boone said Monday’s issues had nothing to do with that.

Before exiting the game, Stanton went 0-for-3 with three groundouts. The first two were missiles at 104.3 mph and 108.9 mph, but hit right at infielders.

In 10 games since coming back from the IL (exclusively as a DH), Stanton is 4-for-38 (.105) with nine strikeouts, five walks and no extra-base hits.

“For being as powerful as he is, he is a guy that hits the ball on the ground and on a line a lot,” Boone said. “Even when he’s come back, so far a lot of his — he’s probably hit about eight to 10 balls, rockets on the ground. Some for hits, two today right at guys. So he’s been a little unlucky in that way.

“He tends to, because of how his swing is, be a little more line drive, a lot more one-hopper ground balls and things like that. It has been a little bit that way since coming back, but I think it’s more for G just finding that really good timing.”

Despite Stanton’s slow start back, the Yankees could ill afford him missing more time, especially with Anthony Rizzo (back) and DJ LeMahieu (toe) already beat up and Andrew Benintendi (broken hamate) set for surgery on Tuesday.

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Yankees’ full-blown collapse suddenly on the table

At this point, you don’t even need to hear the words or listen to the explanations — and what are they going to say, anyway? How are the Yankees going to describe what has happened to this season that was such a dream-cast just 15 minutes ago? How do you explain the inexplicable?

No. All you need to do is look at the eyes. Look at the faces. Look at the Yankees in the dugout these days, looking tortured, looking troubled, looking utterly bewitched and bewildered by what’s happening to them. They lost again Saturday night to Tampa Bay, 2-1. Their lead in the AL East is down to four games. It’s three in the loss column.

It is no longer an abstract notion that the Yankees could collapse.

They are collapsing. Their eyes tell you that much. Their body language tells you that much. And if any of the Yankees were given truth serum, maybe what they’d do is channel an old Red Sox shortstop named Rick (Rooster) Burleson who, after the fourth game of the Boston Massacre 44 years ago, shook his head and gave one of the most honest quotes in the history of quotes.

“Every day,” Burleson said, “you sit in front of your locker and ask God, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ”

What the hell is going on?

Hell, that’s what’s going on. Baseball hell. The Yankees are in such a collective hitting funk it actually felt like a positive consolation prize when Aaron Judge slammed a home run — No. 52 — in the ninth inning Saturday, snapping a 21-inning scoring drought for the Yankees.

Aaron Judge and Aaron Boone
Aaron Judge and Aaron Boone
AP; Getty Images

The Yankees are living under such a dark cloud that it didn’t matter a bit that the Rays tried their best to hand them a freebie, making a couple of awful errors early, running themselves out of what should’ve been a seventh inning rife with insurance runs. Didn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. The Yankees are in such a bad place they aren’t even accepting gifts.

None of this makes sense. Not a bit of it. The Yankees are still the better team on paper in just about every game they play. But they are also showing a skin that’s paper-thin. A five-game winning streak from Aug. 21-26 that seemed to have halted all the negative mojo feels like it happened months ago.

And every day, they sit in the dugout, sit in front of their lockers, and bear a look that distinctly asks: “What the hell is going on?”

Or, as manager Aaron Boone said: “If we don’t dig ourselves out, you’ll have a great story.”

Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt allowed just two runs, but still suffered the loss.
USA TODAY Sports

Great, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. The Yankees don’t want any part of that story. Yankees fans want no part of that story. Yet every day is a fresh chapter. Every day is a case study in a team trapped in its own head. Every game is a thesis in just how easy it is to lose baseball games once you hit the slippery slope.

“There has to be some level of relaxing a little bit,” Boone said. “Walking that fine line in a failing game. We’ve got to be tough-minded right now.”

Boone speaks of winning small victories now, of winning at-bats, of working counts, of stacking quality at-bats. It is sound strategy, sure, one that sounds perfectly reasonable in the quiet of a postgame manager’s office. And one that can sometimes be difficult to translate in a game

Right now, it feels as if the Yankees are trying to translate the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“We’re not where we want to be,” Giancarlo Stanton said, “but we still have a fine opportunity.”

Said Boone: “It’s right there. We have the same conversation every day. We’ve got to find a way, we’ve got to score. We’ve got thing right here to grab and take and we’re still in control of that.”

Through much of August, that’s what sustained the Yankees: As bad as they were playing, they’d built such a cushion that they should be able to right themselves and not have to spend one moment sweating. But they are sure sweating now.

They sure look perplexed in the dugout, and in the postgame clubhouse, trying to explain away one loss after another, trying to make sense of how 15 ½ games became four. No need to ask if the Yankees can collapse. They are collapsing. There are still 29 games to go, still plenty of time to right the ship.

And still plenty of time to sink it.

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Yankees drop ugly 11-inning loss to A’s as five-game win streak ends

OAKLAND, Calif. — After the Yankees were two outs away from a sixth straight win, they blew a lead in the 10th and lost to the hapless A’s, 3-2, in the 11th Saturday night.

The A’s scored the winning run when DJ LeMahieu made a throwing error on what should have been an inning-ending double play on Chad Pinder’s ground ball.

LeMahieu’s wild throw after the feed from Isiah Kiner-Falefa got by Anthony Rizzo at first and allowed automatic runner Shea Langeliers to score with one out in the 11th.

Trivino walked Seth Brown to lead off the 11th and was checked on by the trainers.

Stephen Vogt (right) celebrates with Chad Pinder after belting the game-tying homer in the 10th inning of the Yankees’ 3-2, 11-inning loss to the A’s.
AP

The Yankees had their chances earlier, as Ron Marinaccio allowed a game-tying, two-run homer to pinch-hitter Stephen Vogt with one out in the bottom of the 10th, which wasted a two-run rally in the top of the inning, as well as a terrific outing from Domingo German, who tossed 7 ²/₃ shutout innings.

Since second-place Tampa Bay also lost on Saturday, the Yankees’ lead in the AL East remained at 8 ¹/₂ games.

Perhaps worst of all, the Yankees got just one hit in the 11 innings.

They were able to take advantage of some wild pitching by A.J. Puk to score a pair of runs in the top of the 10th. Andrew Benintendi opened the inning by bunting right back to Puk, who threw out automatic runner Kyle Higashioka at third. Aaron Judge struck out, and Benintendi stole second. Josh Donaldson was walked intentionally, and Puk drilled Rizzo high on the shoulder to load the bases.

A clearly rattled Puk then nearly threw wildly with LeMahieu at the plate, but acrobatic catcher Sean Murphy saved him. But Murphy couldn’t bail Puk out later in the at-bat as a wild pitch got away from him to allow Benintendi to put the Yankees ahead.

Murphy’s flip to Puk at the plate was errant, and Donaldson came around to score a second run on the error.

The 10th-inning dramatics came after German and Oakland right-hander Adam Oller both took no-hitters into the sixth inning.

Anthony Rizzo gets hit by a pitch in the 10th inning of the Yankees’ loss.
USA TODAY Sports

In front of a crowd of 36,529 at Oakland Coliseum — many of the fans there for a postgame drone show — the Yankees didn’t get a hit until Oswaldo Cabrera doubled to right-center to open the top of the sixth.

He was then thrown out trying to steal third, when Oller stepped off the mound and fired to third.

Oller allowed just one hit in his eight shutout innings and faced the minimum number of batters.

After Judge made a nice play in center on a long fly ball by Cal Stevenson in the bottom of the sixth, German gave up an infield hit on a comebacker by Nick Allen and threw the ball away, allowing Allen to get to second, but German retired the next two batters.

Earlier in the game, Cabrera was robbed of an extra-base hit in right by Chad Pinder, who crashed into the wall as he made the catch.

Oakland’s only base runner until the sixth came when German hit Jonah Bride with a pitch to lead off the bottom of the third.

The Yankees barely even hit any balls hard off of Oller, who entered the game with an ERA of 6.41, but had pitched better in his previous three starts. Yet he certainly didn’t seem like a likely candidate to shut down the Yankees.

German was even more dominant, needing just 48 pitches to get through five innings.

He allowed a one-out double to Stevenson in the eighth and Stevenson moved to third on a grounder to second by Allen before being replaced by Jonathan Loaisiga, who got Tony Kemp to ground out to end the inning.

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Yankees look to continue new-found momentum on West Coast trip

Three wins can’t fully erase a rough monthlong slide, but perhaps they can send the Yankees on their way out of it.

For the first time in a while, the Yankees were feeling good about themselves Tuesday night after they finished off a two-game sweep of the Mets. That series victory followed a win Sunday over the Blue Jays, and gave the Yankees a three-game winning streak for the first time since July 28-30.

The Yankees’ mojo had largely gone missing during a 9-20 stretch coming out of the All-Star break (at which point they were still playing at a 113-win pace), especially during the more recent 2-9 skid in which their offense went ice cold. But they looked like a team that was starting to rediscover it over their last three games.

Giancarlo Stanton is expected to return to the Yankees’ lineup against the A’s.
N.Y. Post/Charles Wenzelberg

Now, they will have a chance to reinforce that winning feeling — and to get Giancarlo Stanton back from the injured list to help — when they open a four-game series against the last-place Athletics on Thursday in Oakland, Calif., before visiting the struggling Angels next week.

“I think it’s tough to have a little bit of swagger when you keep losing games and dropping series and not playing your brand of baseball,” Aaron Judge said late Tuesday night before the Yankees flew west. “But I think the swagger’s always been there. I think it just took a little reminder of who we are and what type of baseball we play and going back to doing the basics. We got it back.”

Of course, it helps that Judge has returned to MVP form. After he went through a small rut while the rest of the lineup was also struggling, Judge crushed a home run in each of the two wins over the Mets.

“The dude is pretty much the best hitter right now,” Frankie Montas said after turning in his best start as a Yankee on Tuesday night.

In addition to Judge’s resurgence and signs that Montas is settling in, the Yankees have recently displayed other reasons to believe that they might just be emerging from their funk.

They played two mostly crisp games against the Mets, with their strong defense flashing once again — especially on a pair of double plays between Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Gleyber Torres on Tuesday night. There was a dropped pop-up between Oswaldo Cabrera and Marwin Gonzalez in right field on Monday and Torres (unsuccessfully) racing Jeff McNeil to second base while allowing Pete Alonso to score from third on Tuesday, but manager Aaron Boone attributed both to the amped-up crowd noise.

Timely hits from Andrew Benintendi also played a key role in all three wins. After a cold start in pinstripes, he is batting .310 with nine extra-base hits and a .892 OPS over his last 16 games.

“He’s been big-time,” Judge said. “I told him, ‘Hey, keep leading us. Keep being a guy that can come up in big spots.’ ”

Then there is Cabrera, whose arrival has also given the Yankees a boost. The versatile rookie seemingly has made his presence felt in at least one way every game.

There are still a few areas that offer cause for concern, though, leading with the bullpen. While some unlikely arms helped close out three straight 4-2 wins, the relief corps remains unsettled, with a mix of inconsistency and injuries popping up of late.

And in the lineup, not everyone is out of their slumps just yet. Josh Donaldson is still batting 6-for-44 (.136) with 17 strikeouts and a .445 OPS over his last 12 games, though his walk-off grand slam on Aug. 17 against the Rays certainly helped.

But the Yankees still came out of a tough nine-game homestand looking much better than when they started it.

“I think the most important thing is we learned from it,” Judge said. “We learned about what not to do. That if we don’t do the little things, we don’t make the little plays and prepare the right way, teams are going to come after us. I think it comes back to learn from those mistakes, learn from those series and time to move on to the next one.”

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Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton set to begin rehab assignment

Giancarlo Stanton’s much-needed return to the Yankees’ lineup is coming into focus.

After going through another pregame workout on Friday, Stanton was expected to begin a rehab assignment on Saturday with Double-A Somerset in Bowie, Md.

According to manager Aaron Boone, the plan was for Stanton to serve as the designated hitter on Saturday and Sunday, then return to The Bronx to face Luis Severino in a live batting practice session on Tuesday.

Rehabbing Giancarlo Stanton works out before the Yankees’ 4-0 loss to the Blue Jays.
Robert Sabo

That would keep Stanton, who has been out since July 24 because of Achilles tendinitis, out of action for the Subway Series on Monday and Tuesday.

But if he continues to respond well to the increased workload, Stanton could be in play to rejoin the Yankees on Thursday, when they begin a 10-game road trip at Oakland.

When Stanton does return to the lineup, which has largely lacked a punch without him, he initially will be used strictly as a DH

“Then keep ramping him up in his pregame work and things like that to get to a point where he’d be an outfield option for us,” Boone said.

Aroldis Chapman walked back-to-back hitters on nine pitches for the second time in three games Friday night in the Yankees’ 4-0 loss to the Blue Jays.

Those ninth-inning walks loaded the bases with one out, though Ron Marinaccio cleaned up the mess by limiting the damage to just a sacrifice fly.

Chapman had appeared to be turning a corner before his last two outings.

“Chappy struggled tonight,” Boone said. “This was a rough one tonight. We gotta get after it with him to get him back in line to how he’s been.”

Aroldis Chapman is pulled by Aaron Boone in the ninth inning of the Yankees’ loss to the Blue Jays.
Robert Sabo

Severino will throw another bullpen session Saturday in advance of his live session on Tuesday, his first time facing hitters since hitting the injured list with a low-grade lat strain.

Though Severino is not eligible to be activated off the 60-day IL until Sept. 12, he is encouraged by how he has felt in his bullpen sessions and said he believes he could get big league hitters out right now.

“I don’t feel like I’m coming from any major injury,” he said. “My arm feels pretty good.”

Oswaldo Cabrera played his third different position in his third MLB game on Friday, starting in right field, a position he added to his repertoire earlier this year.

He played third base and shortstop in his first two games with the Yankees after being called up on Wednesday.

“I think one of his strengths as a player is just his maturity and his clock and way about him,” Boone said. “He’s turning himself into a really good player and I think he’s going to be a good player in this league for a long time.

“But the intangible things are really special with him.”

Clarke Schmidt helped the Yankees out of the bullpen earlier this year, but he is currently continuing to build up as the Yankees’ best starting pitching depth (which is thin) at Triple-A.

“Anytime that need comes up [in the bullpen], that’s always potentially in play,” Boone said. “But getting those starts and having that option there is important. But obviously we know he can impact us in the pen. So we’ll continue to talk through that, explore that, see what makes the most sense for us moving forward.”

Albert Abreu has struggled of late in the Yankees’ bullpen — with a 5.91 ERA over his last 10 ²/₃ innings — but he does not have any minor league options left.

“I think it comes down to his sinker command and throwing strikes early and building off of it,” pitching coach Matt Blake said.

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