Schadenfreude 288: (A Continuing Series)

Greg Joyce, Post:

The Yankees snapped their five-game losing streak Tuesday, but a night later, their brutal early season offensive funk remained alive and well.

Without the bases-loaded wild pitch the Braves gifted to them Tuesday to mask their struggles, the Yankees' offense continued to sputter in a 4-1 loss to Atlanta on Wednesday night at a frigid Yankee Stadium.

It was another lifeless loss for the Yankees (6-11), who mustered just five hits (all singles) in the finale of a 1-4 homestand. They drew six walks, but stranded nine base runners and didn't score until . . . two outs in the ninth. . . .

Corey Kluber . . . lost his command in the fifth and surrendered a pair of runs. But even a perfect outing wouldn't have been enough to save the Yankees.

[Atlanta] starter Ian Anderson . . . looked right at home pitching in the chilly conditions. The Yankees hardly made him break a sweat for most of the night as he cruised through six innings on just 78 pitches. . . .

"I believe in our guys," Boone said. . . . "I know we're walking out there with heavy artillery each and every night." . . .

[T]he Yankees have been shooting blanks.

Ken Davidoff, Post:

If it's challenging to elect a poster boy for this horrid Yankees April, so widespread is the malfunction, Gleyber Torres sure has put up quite a case.

First fielding, then hitting and now baserunning? You must see it to believe it.

The Yankees' 4-1 loss . . . their sixth loss in seven games, dropped them to 6-11 on this young season, and it took a village to record such a hellacious effort against an Atlanta team missing its best player Ronald Acuña Jr.

Yet Torres . . . took some postgame heat from manager Aaron Boone for not running hard at all after his seventh-inning, check-swing number went a few feet in front of home plate. Travis d'Arnaud easily threw him out at first base.

"I think any time you've got that kind of situation where a guy's got to get off the mound, you've got to get after it," Boone said. . . . "That's got to be a little bit better obviously." . . .

There are times when hustle is overrated, yet this was not one of them, not with the Yankees starving for runs. . . .

Frustration dominates every corner of this Yankees season, and it has proven to be an absolutely dreadful start of the season for the 24-year-old Torres, who owns a .186/.294/.220 slash line.

"Horrific situational hitting," one scout from another club observed of Torres, on the condition of anonymity. "Totally reliant on hitting home runs."

That's a tough approach when you have zero home runs and one RBI through your team's first 17 games. . . .

Boone hasn't deemed it necessary to "bench" Torres, even for a day, as he did Clint Frazier and Aaron Hicks on Tuesday . . . 

Said Torres afterward: "It's not how you start. It's just how you finish."

Surely, the finish can't get any worse than the start, can it? Yeesh.

Ken Davidoff, Post (early edition of above column)

You know your team is off to a rough start when you can hold an intense, riveting discussion centered around this topic: Whose struggles have confounded you the most?

This might be the only category — most confounding performances — in which the Yankees lead the American League. With that high bar established, you might just prevail by going with Gleyber Torres' April.

Not Torres' unsurprising travails with the glove, but rather his shocking lack of competence with his bat. . . .

As a matter of fact, the 24-year-old has flailed so dramatically at the plate that his defensive proficiency at shortstop has temporarily turned into a secondary concern.

Kristie Ackert, Daily News:

The numbers do not lie. The numbers say this Yankees team is last in the American League in runs scored and wins. They are in the bottom of baseball in slugging and on-base-percentage. . . .

Again Wednesday night, the Yankees looked listless on the job, falling to the Braves 4-1 in front of a crowd of 9,634 who stayed warm by loudly voicing their frustration with the Bombers. . . .

[T]he Yankees (6-11) have won just one of their first six series of the season. It's their worst start through 17 games since 1991 and their 59 runs are the fewest for a Bombers' team through 17 games since 1984.

The offense . . . continues to struggle with just five hits Wednesday night. In the five-game homestand, the Yankees managed to score just 11 runs on 20 hits. . . .

They also have to find a way to keep the frustration that is raining down from their fans . . .

There was plenty of frustration to go around.

LeMahieu went 0-for-5, stranding four base runners, and Giancarlo Stanton went 0-for-4 with a strikeout and three runners stranded. Gary Sanchez went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. Aaron Hicks, dropped down to the No.7 spot after being benched from the starting lineup Tuesday night, went 0-for-3 with two walks.

Corey Kluber continued to struggle, and has yet to get through the fifth inning this season. . . .

The week began with GM Brian Cashman preaching patience and confidence . . . Boone continued to talk about dismissing the numbers . . .

 Pre-Game

Kristie Ackert, Daily News:

Corey Kluber does not feel the pressure.

The two-time Cy Young winner will take the mound Wednesday night not worried about the growing concern with his starts or about a team that desperately needs another win. . . .

The Yankees [have] not gotten much from their starters besides Gerrit Cole. . . . They have combined for a 5.66 ERA and 52 strikeouts over 47.2 inning pitched.

After letting veterans Masahiro Tanaka, J.A. Happ and James Paxton walk as free agents . . . GM Brian Cashman gambled on three guys who pitched a combined one inning in 2020. . . .

The 35-year-old’s proven track record, however, had the Yankees . . . believing he would be a steadying starter behind Cole.

Instead, he’s managed to get through just 10.1 innings in three starts. He’s allowed seven earned runs (6.10 ERA), three home runs and seven walks. . . .

"He has to be nearly perfect now," one American League scout said. . . . "He looks like he's avoiding contact, running up his pitch counts and struggling to put guys away."

Kluber has the highest percentage of hitters barreling up his pitches (15.6) of his career this year. The same with the average exit velocity against (90.7 miles per hour) and percentage of his pitches being hit hard (46.9%). . . . [H]is walk rate (13.2%) is also the highest of his career.

Kluber . . . sees it differently. He said he feels like he is making progress.

Kluber lasted 4.1 innings, throwing 91 pitches. He walked four and gave up two runs, and was given the L.