Schadenfreude 279: (A Continuing Series)

Joel Sherman, Post:

The Yankee offense made it sound like 2020.

Which in 2021 is particularly offensive — though these Yankees certainly cannot be accused of being offensive through the first weekend of the season.

There were 10,066 spectators at the Stadium on Easter Sunday — a full house with 20 percent-capacity rules — and if you closed your eyes it would have been easy to believe this was another game played like 2020 before no fans. Such was the feeble effort of the Yankee lineup. Such was the silencing effect of one fruitless at-bat after another. . . .

In losing the rubber game of this series 3-1 to the Blue Jays, the Yankees offered a tale of two inadequacies. Through the first six innings they struck out just once, but went 1-for-10 with men on base and hitless in five at-bats with runners in scoring position. The Yanks then went nine up, nine down with five whiffs over the last three innings. . . .

[T]he Yanks lost two of three . . . to a Toronto team playing without its key offseason acquisition, George Springer, who was out with an oblique injury. And they lost two of three with little offense though Toronto used replacement starters Saturday (Ross Stripling) and Sunday (T.J. Zeuch) with Robbie Ray and Nate Pearson injured.

"We had a little bit of a cold weekend," Boone said. If this was just a "little bit" of a cold weekend no Yankee fan should want to see a deep freeze. . . .

This provided three more games of evidence that when the Yanks do not get the ball over a fence they will have difficulty generating runs. [Five of the team's eight runs] on the weekend came on [two] infield singles . . . a two-run bloop single . . . and a . . . groundout.

[T]hey were 4-for-24 (.167) with no extra-base hits in the three games with runners in scoring position and 10-for-47 (.213) with men on base. [Overall, the Yankees hit .212 (22-for-104).]

The culprits were many. One, Giancarlo Stanton [0-for-8 with three strikeouts] was given Sunday off because, Boone said, he did not want the oft-injured DH playing five straight days early in the season. But as big a problem of all were the Aarons — Judge and Hicks — at Nos. 2 and 3 in the lineup. They were 0-for-8 Sunday and 4-for-26 in the series. Judge hit into another double play with runners in scoring position. . . .

Hicks had a weekend of one flaccid at-bat after another. He had one hit in 12 at-bats and that was a ground single off the glove of a diving [second baseman]. . . . Hicks' batting average has gone from .266 to .248 to .235 to .225 the past four years. He is 1-for-12 this season. . . .

Yep, it was just one series — the first ever to welcome fans back after a pandemic season. The Yanks doused the enthusiasm of the return with one quiet at-bat after another. The silence it produced at the Stadium was a loud indicator of a lost weekend.

Greg Joyce, Post:

The way Domingo German had pitched in spring training to win the Yankees' fifth starter job made his first regular-season start in 19 months a much-anticipated one.

But Sunday turned out to be a dud, and not just for the right-hander.

German gave up a pair of homers in a three-inning start and the Yankees' quiet bats offered no help as they fell to the Blue Jays, 3-1 . . .

The Yankees mustered only five hits against T.J. Zeuch and a parade of Blue Jays relievers, going 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position. The final 11 Yankees batters were retired in order . . .

[German] needed 68 pitches to get through three innings — including 34 in the three-run second inning . . .

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. led off the second by tagging a fastball for an opposite-field home run to put the Blue Jays up 1-0. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. then singled before German left a changeup over the heart of the plate to Randal Grichuk, who crushed it to left field for a two-run homer and the 3-0 lead. . . .

German got little support from his offense. . . . The Yankees had other chances to put together rallies, but failed to do so, stranding a runner in every inning from the second to the sixth.