Yankees Fans: Gary Sanchez Came Back Down to Earth
After being shutout in back-to-back games against the Baltimore Orioles, it looks increasingly unlikely that the Yankees will be playing in the Postseason.
August was a magical run for the Yankees, led by the AL Player of the Month Gary Sanchez. A recently called up rookie catcher hitting .389, a .832 OPS, 20 runs, nine doubles, 11 home runs, and 21 RBI is the type of thing I’ll one day tell my children; similar to the way my father spoke of Reggie Jackson in the 1978 World Series.
It remains to be seen what kind of career Sanchez carves out for himself, following this monumental first big league taste. Let’s just hope it doesn’t lend itself to the type of performances he’s strung together over the past four games, where he’s gone an anemic 3-17.
While I tried telling people to keep their expectations in check because this is still a 23-year-old wide-eyed kid, Sanchez continued to defy the odds, willing the Yankees to within 2.5 games back of a Wild Card spot, as recently as Wednesday night.
And while I did everything I possibly could to avoid pessimism, deep down inside, I was just waiting for Sanchez’s Earth shattering debut to dissolve into the atmosphere.
Not because he began wildly swinging at pitches out of the strike zone as he consistently did in the Royals’ series, or the way it appears he’s swinging for the fences during every at-bat after the first two losses to the Orioles, but simply because he couldn’t keep doing what he was doing forever.
There was always going to be an expiration date on Sanchez carrying the Yankees as far as he did. It certainly helped that Starlin Castro lived up to his second half tradition of an offensive awakening, Jacoby Ellsbury remembering how to get on base and Ronald Torreyes finding lighting in a bottle.
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But the starting pitching has been topsy-turvey, the bullpen–poor. The continual rotation of the batting order that created an air of uncertain animosity in Chase Headley, Brian McCann, and Mark Teixeira, could only be ignored for so long.
With just three hits in his previous 38 at-bats and an outlandish 22 strikeouts, Aaron Judge hasn’t exactly lived up to the hype since he and Tyler Austin (he too struggling in a bad way) both hit home runs in their inaugural Major League game.
So just like that, the proverbial air was sucked right out of the playoff chase.
As Sanchez stated before the Yankees’ 2-0, four hit no-show: “Part of baseball is the ups and downs. Nobody’s going to be able to hit 1.000. … Now it’s up to me to make adjustments.”
Don’t be mad that Sanchez has cooled off–because the Yankees and their fans got way more out of him since his call-up than anyone on the planet would have expected. Don’t be upset at Aaron Judge or Tyler Austin because they haven’t mastered Major League pitching yet. And don’t be too hard on Joe Girardi, as he’s doing what he feels is best to keep this club afloat.
As hard as it might be after falling back to 4.5 games of that final AL wild Card spot, don’t be angry at anyone, because this Yankees team has accomplished way more than it should have when you look back at what transpired on Aug. 1.
Instead, be optimistic that the Baby Bombers are headed down the right path. While you can’t control injuries, like the one that happened to Chad Green on Friday night, the future is still brighter than it’s been in the Yankees’ universe in quite some time.
Of course, if the organization doesn’t capitalize on all the positives they’ve collected during the latter part of 2016, you know, like by adding an impact piece or two in the offseason, dumping some dead financial weight, or failing to correctly groom the majority of these newly minted prospects, then be up in arms, calling for real change with those deemed responsible.
Because I’ll be right there with you.
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