ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Gerrit Cole gave the Yankees six and a third innings Wednesday night and allowed three runs. On most nights that wins a baseball game.
It was not enough. The Yankees lost 3-0 at Tropicana Field, managing six hits and going 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position. Shane McClanahan took the win. Cole took the loss. Bryan Baker closed it out.
Two men in the middle of the Yankees lineup went a combined 0-for-8. Neither is a rookie. Neither is a prospect finding his way. Both were signed to be the answer when the club lost its best hitters.
New York fell to 50-42, five games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East. The postseason race has not slipped away. The lineup, for three weeks, has.
Goldschmidt’s slump has crossed into history
Paul Goldschmidt is 38 years old. He has seven All-Star selections and an MVP award. Before this season, he had never gone hitless in more than seven games.
After Wednesday, that number is 10 games and 35 plate appearances without a hit. Over that span he has struck out 15 times and walked once, with a .029 OPS.
Only two 10-game spans of at least 35 plate appearances have produced a lower OPS this millennium, belonging to Cheslor Cuthbert in 2019 and Brad Ausmus in 2006. It has happened nine times total since 1930.
The at-bat streak carries its own weight. Goldschmidt is hitless in a career-high 33 straight at-bats. He is the third position player in Yankees history to reach that mark, after Gil McDougald’s 36 in 1959 and Ed Weeney’s 34 in 1914.
None of this was predictable. Through his first 55 games, Goldschmidt hit .301 with a .933 OPS. With Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton out, he was the right-handed bat holding the middle of the order together.
A veteran refuses to hide behind an explanation
Goldschmidt struck out four times Tuesday, on a night the Yankees whiffed 17 times. He met reporters afterward and offered no mechanical excuse, no talk of bad luck, no reference to the calendar.
“I wish I had an answer for you,” Goldschmidt said.
Pressed on what was wrong, he described chasing outside the zone and taking pitches inside it. Then he assessed the opposing staff without flinching.
“They beat me tonight, every time, badly,” Goldschmidt said.
He said a player cannot carry a bad night into the next day, and allowed that the results had not improved.
Bellinger’s stretch is the worst of his career
The Yankees’ second problem is younger, more expensive, and just made an All-Star team.
Cody Bellinger is 30. He signed a five-year, $162.5 million contract with the Yankees in January 2026, and is owed more than $100 million after this season if he does not opt out. He is the club’s All-Star player representative this year, his third selection.
Entering Wednesday, Bellinger had gone 6-for-55 across 15 games dating to June 21, with a .355 OPS. Measured against every 15-game stretch of at least 60 plate appearances in his career, that ranked as his second worst.
Then he went 0-for-4 against the Rays. The span from June 22 through July 8 now stands as the worst 15-game stretch of his career.
The full-season line still looks respectable. Bellinger is slashing .248/.344/.421 with a .765 OPS and 11 home runs through 88 games. He hit three homers in June and none in July. The early months are propping up the ledger.
One evaluator writing this week put the collapse in team context. The point was not that Bellinger had been bad all year. It was that New York fell out of first place while he stopped hitting.
“They’ve been awful lately. And that’s Bellinger,” the evaluator wrote.
The same assessment noted Bellinger entered Monday hitting .121 with one RBI over his previous 16 games, a stretch in which the Yankees went 4-12.
Two slumps, one lineup, no cover
Separately, either drought would be survivable. Together they have hollowed out the middle of the order. Over the last 10 games Bellinger is 4-for-39, a .103 average. Goldschmidt is 0-for-34.
That is 73 at-bats and four hits between them.
The timing makes it acute. Judge and Stanton are unavailable. The two players signed to absorb that loss are producing least. The pitching staff has held up, and Cole’s line Wednesday proved it, but no rotation outruns a lineup that scores nothing.
The Yankees have gone 2-8 over their last 10 games. They struck out 34 times over two games against Tampa Bay, a franchise record for a two-game span.
Opinion inside the industry splits on which slump is the real problem. One analysis published Thursday argued Bellinger’s struggles should not worry anyone, calling him too talented to stay down and pointing to fatigue from a heavier offensive burden. That view holds that he returns to form by August.
Goldschmidt does not get that benefit. He is 38, on a one-year deal, and his slump has already outrun anything in his 16-year career. Age is not an explanation anyone can coach away.
Where the Yankees stand
Yankees manager Aaron Boone has kept both in the lineup. Goldschmidt hit third Wednesday and played first. Bellinger hit fifth and played left.
Neither reached base.
The Yankees close the series against the Rays on Thursday, then visit Washington before the All-Star break. Bellinger will represent the club in that game. Goldschmidt will not.
The trade deadline follows. A front office that expected first base and designated hitter to be settled must now weigh whether they are. Ben Rice can cover first. Bellinger can move around. The flexibility exists. The production does not.
Goldschmidt’s next at-bat will be his 34th straight without a hit, unless something changes. Bellinger’s next 15 games cannot be worse than his last 15. New York is counting on both facts.
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