NEW YORK — The seventh inning of Sunday’s doubleheader opener told the whole story. The Yankees trailed the Dodgers by two, and Ben Rice led off with a double.
The heart of the order came up. It went quietly.
Jasson Dominguez chased a pitch and popped out. Cody Bellinger missed a hanging splitter from Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Max Schuemann lined out on a fastball down the middle. Rice never moved past second.
An inning later, the Dodgers scored five and turned a close game into an 8-2 rout. The sequence framed a debate now shaping the Yankees’ deadline plans.
As Yankees fans dream about prying All-Star closer Mason Miller from the Padres, a prominent insider says the team should look the other way entirely. They also have a big chance of landing him. The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner argues New York’s trade capital belongs on the position-player side, not on a reliever it does not need.
A bullpen luxury the Yankees can skip
Miller is the kind of arm that sparks fantasy trades, a flamethrowing closer stuck on a middling San Diego club. But the Yankees already own one of baseball’s best bullpens and a standout closer in David Bednar. Another late-inning weapon would be a luxury layered onto a strength.
The logic of a Miller trade runs backward for a contender in New York’s position. A closer touches roughly one inning a night, and only when the Yankees hold a late lead. The problem lately has not been protecting leads. It has been building them in the first place.
The offense is the actual crisis. Entering Sunday’s doubleheader, the Yankees ranked among the six worst lineups in the majors since June 1, the stretch that began with Aaron Judge’s absence.
The shape of the slump is not a fluke. Since Judge went down with a fractured rib, the Yankees are walking far less, hitting the ball hard less often and chasing more pitches out of the zone. That combination points to more ugly nights, not fewer.
Dead spots up and down the order
The lineup’s thinness is stark. In Sunday’s opener, the Yankees started five players with an OPS beginning in the .600s, including their Nos. 3 and 6 hitters. In the nightcap, they did it again, five more sub-.700 bats.
The wasted chances piled up. In Game 2, the Yankees loaded the bases with no outs in the fifth and did not score, as Dominguez struck out, Jazz Chisholm Jr. popped out and Anthony Volpe struck out.
They avoided a sweep only when Chisholm homered in the eighth off Evan Phillips, a low-leverage Dodgers reliever, for a 2-1 win.
Players who see the problem
Third baseman Ryan McMahon tried to project belief after the opener, insisting the talent in the room is enough to snap out of it.
“We know we got the guys to get this going,” McMahon said.
The numbers complicate that confidence. The players currently available may simply not be good enough to carry the lineup until Judge returns, a return still weeks away, with Giancarlo Stanton’s calf timeline unknown on top of it. Belief and production have not matched.
One Yankee did not hide from his role in the struggles. Chisholm, mired in an uneven season, owned it bluntly after the Game 2 win.
“I’ve sucked all season,” Chisholm said. “The numbers speak for themselves.”
The bats the Yankees should chase instead
The Yankees sit 1.5 games back in the AL East, and Kirschner argues that a right-handed-hitting catcher, a need they have not hidden, would not be nearly enough. To move the needle, New York may have to trade from a group that includes Dominguez, Volpe, Spencer Jones and pitching depth such as Will Warren and Elmer Rodriguez.
Kirschner laid out a set of position players who could shake loose before the deadline, framing the catcher market and a middle-infield fit in Washington as the most logical places to look.
“Will the Athletics consider moving catcher Shea Langeliers, with multiple years of club control remaining, ahead of their move to Las Vegas? How about the Colorado Rockies with their All-Star catcher, Hunter Goodman?” Kirschner wrote. “CJ Abrams would make sense for the Yankees, especially if he plays second base next year.”
A second tier of bats could add depth, with names like Luis Arraez, Mickey Moniak, JJ Bleday and Spencer Steer in play. Each would upgrade a lineup running on empty in too many spots.
There is an internal card, too. Top prospect George Lombard Jr., 21, is nearing his major-league debut, and the organization believes he can help the bottom of the order.
But leaning on unproven prospects is part of how the Yankees arrived here. Kirschner points to Dominguez as a major disappointment, Volpe as increasingly a bench piece with Lombard coming, and Austin Wells as having struggled badly at the plate.
That is why the push is to import established hitters rather than wait on a savior. With two weeks until the Aug. 3 deadline, Kirschner framed the stakes in stark terms.
“Regardless of the Yankees’ strategic direction as the trade deadline approaches, failing to aggressively bolster their lineup would be a significant oversight,” Kirschner wrote.
The deadline market is still taking shape, with several potential difference-makers not yet certain to move. Whether the Athletics deal Langeliers before their move to Las Vegas, and whether surprise contender Washington shops Abrams, will help set the Yankees‘ options.
Whatever direction general manager Brian Cashman chooses, the warning is the same. A team this thin at the plate cannot afford to spend its best trade chips on a strength. For now, the Yankees are left to decide whether they agree.
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