NEW YORK — The Yankees are in freefall. Six straight losses have knocked them out of first place in the American League East, buried their offense at historic lows, and left a rotation that anchored the season in shambles. A team that owned the best record in the American League a week ago cannot get out of its own way.
The Yankees’ skid has reached historic territory. According to New York Yankees Stats, they became the first MLB team since at least 1898 to lose all five games, strike out at least 45 times and hit under .105 across a five-game span.
The bats have gone quiet at the worst possible time. New York has only 16 hits over its last five, the lowest total over any five-game stretch in franchise history. The Yankees also managed just three hits in each of their previous four games, another franchise first for a single season, and had only two hits entering the bottom of the ninth
The gloves have betrayed them. And the pitching staff that carried the Yankees for two months has suddenly stopped holding the line.
Boston swept them in four games at Fenway Park. Detroit followed with two more beatings in the Bronx. The Yankees have now dropped six in a row and nine of 11, sliding behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL East.
The offense has reached depths the franchise has rarely seen, but the deeper wound is on the mound, where the starters keep falling behind early and handing games away.
The freefall has a clear starting point, and it was not a defeat. It was a decision, one strange, sudden managerial choice that preceded the entire collapse. The Yankees led the AL East when it happened. They have been chasing ever since, staring down the possibility of their first seven-game losing streak in nearly three years.
The strange decision that began it all
On June 20, minutes after a 10-2 drubbing by the Reds at Yankee Stadium, Aaron Boone announced a surprise change to his rotation. He pushed ace Gerrit Cole and every other starter back a day and handed the ball to a rookie. The move was sold as routine maintenance. It has aged like a turning point.
The announcement caught the industry off guard. Elmer Rodriguez, the Yankees’ most major-league-ready pitching prospect, had been slated to start that Saturday night for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in Columbus, Ohio. Instead, he was hustled to the Bronx on last-minute travel to start Sunday. Cole, originally lined up for that day, was bumped to Monday in Detroit.
Boone said the idea had been forming for days and was tied to a grueling run of 16 games in 16 days, not to any injury. Cole had played catch in center field before Saturday’s game and looked fine.
“It’s something we’ve been kicking around the last few days,” Boone said after the loss.
He described it as simple workload management across the staff.
The move was “nothing other than just this long stretch and just giving all our starters an extra day,” Boone said. “So everyone else will bump back a day.”
Cole, five starts into his return from Tommy John surgery, said he felt good after his June 16 outing, and pitching coach Matt Blake told the Daily News the Cy Young winner was healthy. The 35-year-old was 2-1 with a 2.57 ERA over 28 innings, having thrown a season-high 90 pitches in a win over the White Sox. Boone framed the caution as protecting his arms for the long haul.
“He’s recovered well,” Boone said of Cole. “But we also want to play the long game with all these guys. Obviously, Carlos is coming back, younger guys in the rotation have logged a lot of innings. I feel like they’re all in a good spot, but we want to be mindful of this as we go through the summer with a long stretch here.”
The workload was real. Cam Schlittler led the Yankees with 95 innings, third-most in baseball, a year after a career-high 149 2/3. Ryan Weathers sat at 80 2/3, up from 56 1/3 last year. Will Warren, roughed up for six runs, two earned, in 5 2/3 innings that Saturday, was at 78 1/3. Rodon had thrown 36 innings in six starts since returning May 10. To open a roster spot for Rodriguez, the Yankees optioned reliever Jake Bird, who carried a 4.88 ERA.
A top-flight rotation starts to unravel
Rodriguez lasted four-plus innings in a 4-1 loss to the Reds that Sunday. The Yankees briefly steadied themselves in Detroit, taking two games from the Tigers, but the reprieve did not last. The following weekend at Fenway Park, the rotation began to spring leaks that never got plugged. The game accounts that follow are drawn from Associated Press, ESPN and CBS Sports box scores.
It started June 25. Schlittler, in the outing that pushed him past 100 innings, watched the Red Sox plate four unearned runs in a single frame, and the Yankees fell 6-3. The defense failed him, but the pattern of early damage had begun.
The next night was worse. Boston rookie Payton Tolle retired his first 16 batters, and Will Warren could not match him in a 6-1 loss on June 26. Willson Contreras homered over the Green Monster, benches emptied after a Contreras walk, and the Yankees managed one hit into the sixth inning.
June 27 brought Cole, and the extra rest changed nothing. Masataka Yoshida launched Cole’s second pitch of the afternoon into the Boston bullpen, Jake Bennett silenced the Yankees, and Boston won 4-1 for a third straight day. The ace the Yankees had tried to protect gave up an early homer and took the loss.
Then came the gut punch. On June 28, Carlos Rodon and the bullpen carried a bid to avoid the sweep, with Boston’s Sonny Gray taking a no-hitter into the eighth. The Yankees rallied to lead 4-2 in the 10th, but Fernando Cruz could not hold it, and Jarren Duran singled home the winner in a 5-4 defeat. It completed Boston’s first four-game sweep of the Yankees since 2018 and dropped New York out of first place. Jazz Chisholm Jr. was ejected during the game, a snapshot of a team coming apart.
Home comforts offers no return
Home cooking offered no cure. The Tigers arrived in the Bronx and extended the misery, with the Yankees’ starters again surrendering early runs to a lineup that could not answer.
On June 29, Weathers lasted just 1 2/3 innings in a 7-3 loss. Detroit scored five unearned runs behind him, and Casey Mize carved up the Yankees with a one-hit gem and 10 strikeouts. The night turned frightening when Chisholm left with a concussion after colliding with Jasson Dominguez in the outfield.
The low point came June 30. Schlittler, who entered with a 1.62 ERA, was battered for a career-worst four home runs in a 9-3 loss. Riley Greene took him deep twice as Detroit hit five homers in a single game against the Yankees for the first time since 2018. The Yankees managed four hits, two in the ninth, and their best pitcher had joined the collapse.
Across the six losses, the throughline was the rotation. Schlittler, Warren, Cole, Rodon and Weathers each fell behind early, and a lineup pressing to catch up rarely could. Since blowing a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning that opening Thursday in Boston, the Yankees had led for only a few minutes total, during the 10th inning of the Sunday finale.
The numbers underline how far the staff has fallen from its early form. A rotation that ranked among the American League’s best entered July giving up runs before its offense even came to bat, and the results have followed. The Yankees, once comfortably in first, now trail Tampa Bay and are trying to avoid their longest skid in years.
The Yankees insist the talent that carried them has not vanished. But the freefall traces back to a single afternoon in the Bronx, when a first-place manager decided his rested arms needed protecting, and everything that followed suggested the timing could not have been worse.
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