NEW YORK — For a few weeks, the Yankees made it look manageable. They lost the best hitter in baseball and kept winning anyway, and the story became how well they were coping without Aaron Judge. That story has run out.
The offense has gone cold all at once, and the absence the team had been masking is now impossible to ignore.
The Yankees have lost five straight and eight of 10, scoring at a rate that would embarrass a last-place club. They were swept by the Red Sox, then crushed 7-3 by the Tigers, and the lineup that once carried them has stopped producing.
What changed is not complicated. The bats around Judge cooled at the same moment, and there is no longer a star to cover for them.
The Yankees can no longer pretend the Judge-sized hole does not exist. National analysts have pinpointed his absence as the root of the slide, the numbers over the last two weeks are among the worst in baseball, and the help on the way does not include the one player who would fix everything. New York entered the week in first place in the American League East and now sits behind the Tampa Bay Rays.
The grace period is over
The Yankees survived the early weeks without Judge because of an initial surge. That cushion is gone. Will Leitch of MLB.com pointed to the exact turn, noting that the offense held up at first but has since cratered.
“The Yankees lineup is finally feeling the loss of Aaron Judge after an initial uptick without him,” Leitch wrote. “They’ve lost nine of their past 16 games, averaging just more than two runs per game.”
The recent run production tells the story. The Yankees have averaged 2.64 runs per game over their last 11, going 3-8 in that stretch, according to CBS Sports. In the four-game sweep at Fenway Park, they scored three, one, one and four runs, totaling nine across the series.
The deeper numbers are uglier. Over the last 15 days, the Yankees own a .679 OPS, 25th in the majors. Over the last week, that figure drops to .503, 29th. For a lineup that began the year as one of the sport’s best, the freefall has been steep and sudden.
The numbers without their captain
Judge’s value shows up starkly in the team’s record. With him in the lineup this season, the Yankees were 36-23. Without him, they are 12-13, a split that captures how much the offense depends on him.
He has been out since early June with a fractured right rib and is not close to returning, with no timeline in place. Last season he hit .331 with a .457 on-base percentage and a .688 slugging mark, and he has led the majors in OPS in each of his last three full seasons. There is no replacing that production internally.
The Yankees are not a barren offense on paper. They still lead the majors in home runs, rank seventh in runs scored and sit third in OPS, according to CBS Sports. But they are also 22nd in batting average, an OPS-heavy profile that swings between booms and the kind of prolonged silence on display now.
Over the last four games, that silence reached historic depths. The Yankees hit .098, the worst four-game stretch in franchise history, and became the first team in American League history to bat under .100 while striking out at least 35 times across four games, per data shared by team statisticians.
No one is picking up the slack
A team built to withstand an injury needs its supporting cast to step up. The Yankees have gotten the opposite. Ben Rice, who looked like an MVP candidate early, has regressed hard. After hitting .304 with a .400 on-base percentage and a .641 slugging mark through June 8, he has hit .178 with a .241 on-base mark over his last 18 games, per CBS Sports.
Cody Bellinger rakes at Yankee Stadium but disappears on the road, where he is hitting .182 this season. The rest of the lineup has not filled the void. Jazz Chisholm Jr. is at .223 with a 96 OPS+, Austin Wells is slashing .157/.258/.241 with a 41 OPS+, and Ryan McMahon sits at a 74 OPS+.
The young players given a chance have not seized it. Spencer Jones is hitting .215 with 32 strikeouts in 65 at-bats. Jasson Dominguez is at .214 with a 79 OPS+ and has struck out 21 times against three walks. The depth that was supposed to bridge the gap has instead widened it.
Injuries compound the problem. Giancarlo Stanton is not close to returning, and Trent Grisham, who was raking before a hamstring strain, has been out, though he is expected back this week.
A breaking point with no quick fix
There are reasons the Yankees believe the worst will pass. They have 12 of their next 19 games at home, where Bellinger thrives, and Grisham’s return should lengthen the lineup. Rice’s downturn was a predictable regression rather than a collapse, and Chisholm has shown he can get hot.
But the central truth has hardened into a problem the Yankees can no longer talk around. As CBS Sports put it, the biggest issue is Judge’s absence, and the team will not be a fearsome offense until he is back, with no guarantee that happens soon.
The Yankees, now 48-36, will try to halt the skid Tuesday against the Tigers, sending Cam Schlittler to face Detroit ace Tarik Skubal. A win would ease the panic. It would not change the larger reality. Until Judge returns, this is who the Yankees are, and the last two weeks have shown them exactly what that looks like.
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