TORONTO — Cam Schlittler kept giving the New York Yankees chances to turn one run into something meaningful Saturday. The Yankees kept giving those chances back.
Schlittler worked through traffic, missed bats and limited the Toronto Blue Jays to one run over 5 1/3 innings at Rogers Centre. His command was not at its sharpest, but seven strikeouts and 14 whiffs helped him prevent Toronto from cashing in on several early opportunities.
The Yankees still walked away with a 4-1 loss, their third straight defeat and their fourth consecutive loss in a Schlittler start. Toronto broke a 1-1 tie in the seventh against Brent Headrick and added two more runs in the eighth.
The score suggested a close game until late. The offensive line revealed something worse: New York barely created enough traffic to threaten Toronto at all.
Four hits, four total bases
The Yankees finished with four hits. Every one was a single. That meant four total bases against seven Toronto pitchers, with no double, triple or home run to create the kind of instant offense a struggling lineup badly needed.
New York’s only scoring sequence came from two rookies in the second inning. Spencer Jones singled, stole second and scored when George Lombard Jr. lined an RBI single. Lombard later reached second after Toronto failed to make a play on him, but Ryan McMahon and Austin Wells could not bring him home.
That was essentially the Yankees’ entire offensive pulse. They did not record another hit until the seventh.
Toronto, by contrast, left 12 runners on base. New York stranded only three. The gap was not a sign of Yankees efficiency. It showed how rarely the lineup put runners on in the first place.
Trent Grisham, Ben Rice and Heliot Ramos, the top three hitters in the order, combined to go 0-for-11. Ramos finished 0-for-4 and extended his hitless stretch to 0-for-20.
Aggression creates a run, then erases a chance
The Yankees’ best moment came through aggression. Jones’ stolen base in the second put him in position for Lombard’s single and gave New York a 1-0 lead.
The same idea backfired five innings later.
Luis García Jr. opened the seventh with a single in a 1-1 game. The Yankees tried to exploit right-hander Spencer Miles’ slow delivery, but García was caught stealing second. The only baserunner New York produced in the inning disappeared before the lineup could build anything behind him.
Jones then struck out in a six-pitch plate appearance. The failed chance became more damaging when Charles McAdoo doubled home Ernie Clement in the bottom half to give Toronto a 2-1 lead.
Toronto added two runs in the eighth against Tim Hill. Louis Varland then struck out Rice, Ramos and García in order in the ninth to finish the game and collect his 28th save.
Spencer Miles earned the win. Headrick took the loss after allowing the go-ahead run.
Schlittler again gets almost no margin
Cam Schlittler allowed four hits and three walks while throwing 97 pitches, 56 for strikes. His four-seam fastball averaged 98.2 mph, and he generated 14 whiffs on 40 swings.
Saturday marked his 13th road start this season of at least five innings with one earned run or fewer. According to the supplied Stathead data, only Luis Tiant in 1968 and Walter Johnson in 1912 and 1913 had more such road outings in an American League season, with 14.
The Yankees have now lost 14 games this season in which their starter went at least five innings and allowed one earned run or fewer. Only the Mets and Royals have more such losses. New York had 10 all of last season.
The pattern has become particularly costly for Schlittler. The Yankees have lost five of his last six starts, including four in a row, while averaging 2.8 runs in those six games.
Schlittler’s season remains strong. MLB listed him at 10-6 with a 2.04 ERA through 23 starts, with 165 strikeouts in 136 2/3 innings. The problem Saturday was not what he gave the Yankees. It was what the lineup did with it.
Boone calls it a broken record
The latest loss pushed the Yankees to 68-55. Their recent offensive numbers explain why another quality start was not enough.
Since the All-Star break, MLB reported that New York ranked 28th in runs scored with 85 and 29th in team OPS at .625 entering Sunday. Over the same span, the pitching staff owned MLB’s best ERA at 2.89.
Boone acknowledged the repetition after Saturday’s game while still defending the hitters on his lineup card.
“Broken record. Obviously, we know we got to be better,” Boone said. “This is who we got. These are our guys, and I continue to believe wholeheartedly [when] looking at these names, they’re all capable of doing really big things for us. But we got to go do it.”
The longer-term numbers are no kinder. Since June 2, the first game after Aaron Judge went on the injured list, the Yankees entered Saturday last in MLB in strikeout rate, batting average and on-base percentage. They were also in the bottom five in OPS, wRC+ and runs scored.
Saturday distilled that larger slump into one unusually stark line: four Yankees hits, four Yankees total bases.
Toronto used a bullpen game and still kept New York from producing an extra-base hit. The Blue Jays could afford to strand 12 runners because the Yankees never made their own missed chances matter.
Yankees face another test in Toronto
Boone said he could “maybe shake up the order a little bit here and there” as the Yankees searched for a spark. The immediate problem is that the missing power cannot be solved simply by rearranging the same names.
Judge, Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton remain sidelined. The current lineup has to generate enough offense to survive until reinforcements return.
The Yankees were set to try to avoid a sweep Sunday against Toronto ace Dylan Cease, with Ryan Weathers scheduled for New York.
For Schlittler, Saturday became another strong start without the result it deserved. For the Yankees offense, the four singles made the failure even harder to disguise.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
