Even without “three of our top five hitters,” as hitting coach Dillon Lawson put it, the Yankees‘ lineup being shut out in consecutive matches this week and for the 3rd & 4th time in 10 days was shocking.
Lawson says there is “no doubt” the American League’s top offense has missed injured run creators Giancarlo Stanton and Matt Carpenter, and more recently DJ LeMahieu, or that other slumping regulars need to take up their absent comrades.
Aaron Hicks has been a clear offender for a long time this season. After a hitless game Monday night in which he hit into a 1-2-3 double play with the bases full in the 4th inning of a 4-0 loss to Tampa Bay, he was left out of Tuesday’s lineup, and MVP front-runner Aaron Judge went back to center field.
Lawson also said that he thinks Josh Donaldson & Gleyber Torres “swung the bat well” on the Yankees’ recent 2-7 road trip. Both players had been in a slump before the trip.
Still, since his 4-hit game on August 8 in Seattle, Donaldson has gone 3-for-25 with no extra-base hits, RBIs, or strikeouts. Torres has had three hits in the last two games, after going 0 for 22 games in a row. On Tuesday, Andrew Benintendi got on base three times and hit a single & a triple. Since being traded from the Royals on July 27, he has played 18 games and is hitting .211 with an OPS of .657.
Judge has more home runs than anyone else in MLB, but he can’t do everything for a lineup that has only averaged 2.75 runs over its last 12 games after scoring 5.4 runs per game in its 1st 105 games.
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