{"id":200706,"date":"2025-07-25T01:31:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T01:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/200706\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T01:31:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T01:31:18","slug":"yankees-have-had-too-many-defensive-lapses-in-toronto-and-everywhere-else-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/200706\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees have had too many defensive lapses in Toronto, and everywhere else, this season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The problem with the Yankees\u2019 organization is it generally looks at the kinds of games that occurred Wednesday night in Toronto as some kind of outlier.<\/p>\n

The Yankees kicked the ball all over Eastern Canada in an 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays<\/a>, committing four errors. That gave them a remarkable seven in the three-game series loss and an even more remarkable 11 in the seven games they\u2019ve played this season at Rogers Centre.<\/p>\n

The Yankees went 1-6 in those games.<\/p>\n

And they were fortunate to win the one, Tuesday night\u2019s 5-4 victory<\/a> in which Ben Rice\u2019s ninth-inning homer provided cover for yet another error \u2013 this one by struggling shortstop Anthony Volpe in the sixth inning \u2013 that helped the Blue Jays score two unearned runs to pull even at 4-4.<\/p>\n

Sure, no big-league team \u2013 the Rockies might be the rare exception \u2013 is truly that bad in the field and the Yankees, despite their ham-handedness in the previous three games and in a handful of others this season, certainly aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

And Aaron Boone for the most part wasn\u2019t wrong when he said after Wednesday\u2019s butcher-bowl, \u201cwe\u2019ve got really good defenders.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the eighth-year manager went off the rails a bit when, multiple times in the same postgame news conference, he suggested his club\u2019s defensive issues during this stretch in which the Yankees have lost 21 of 35 games was somehow exclusive to Rogers Centre. As if the grounds crew there strategically peppered the turf with pebbles and banana peels before each half inning the Yankees went on defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s here and I think it\u2019s in this building we haven\u2019t played well,\u201d Boone said.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Yankees had an inordinate amount of errors at Rogers Centre, but the bigger picture issue remains: the Yankees have still had far too many innings this season that resemble the calamitous fifth inning of last year\u2019s Game 5 against the Dodgers in the World Series<\/a> when they committed two errors \u2013 and an unofficial third one when Gerrit Cole failed to cover first base \u2013 in flushing a 5-0 lead en route to a season-ending 7-6 defeat.<\/p>\n

Much was made of some Dodgers players \u2013 though no player of real consequence \u2013 uttering some kick-dirt-on-their-grave comments in the aftermath about the Yankees. Joe Kelly led the way, saying, among other things, during an appearance on the Baseball Isn\u2019t Boring podcast: \u201cWe were saying every single game, \u2018Just let them throw the ball to the infield. They can’t make a play.\u2019 . . .\u00a0It’s well-known. We all knew. I mean we’re the Dodgers, we know every little detail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly\u2019s gracelessness in victory aside, the pitcher voiced an element of his team\u2019s scouting report on the Yankees.<\/p>\n

But while that part of the Dodgers\u2019 advanced scouting received the attention it did, it was just as much an aspect of the reports Royals\u2019 scouts put together before the Division Series, and the ones Guardians\u2019 scouts filed before the ALCS. It wasn\u2019t just the Dodgers who \u201cknew every little detail\u201d in that respect.<\/p>\n

The synopsis: put the ball in play, see what happens.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely, that was a big part,\u201d one Royals insider said.<\/p>\n

Added a Guardians talent evaluator: \u201cReally not much of a secret. We all were saying pretty much the same thing. Put it in play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Yankees\u2019 organization, almost always defensive about its defense and its lack of emphasis on it at all levels in recent years, did go about trying to upgrade that side of the ball last winter. They added players such as Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger \u2013 both Gold Glovers \u2013 not to mention Max Fried, a three-time Gold Glove-winning pitcher.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely better defensively than last year,\u201d said one National League talent evaluator. \u201cGood? I wouldn\u2019t say that. Like a lot of teams, there\u2019s just no consistency with some of the basic fundamental stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Volpe, a Gold Glover his rookie year in 2023, leads the majors with 13 errors (tied with Giants shortstop Willy Adames)\u00a0and, because of his simultaneous struggles at the plate, is taking many of the arrows for the Yankees\u2019 play of late.<\/p>\n

But, as a second NL scout said, \u201cthird base is just a mess\u201d (the reason the club has been scouring for a better option there since the beginning of last offseason), and \u201c(Jasson) Dominguez\u00a0isn\u2019t good enough out there (in left) yet, but it is better than the spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, to this point,\u00a0is where the Yankees are defensively. Better than last year.<\/p>\n

But not good enough.<\/p>\n

Maybe the trade deadline fixes some of that.<\/p>\n

Maybe not.<\/p>\n

\"Erik<\/p>\n

\n\tErik Boland started in Newsday’s sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The problem with the Yankees\u2019 organization is it generally looks at the kinds of games that occurred Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[4369,5,377,2554,4,62,282,70,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-200706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-blue-jays","11":"tag-bluejays","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-new-york-yankees","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","16":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114911293448458746","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}