On Tuesday night, the New York Yankees embarked on their first postseason run since 2012. Surely they were hoping it would last long enough to see them through to championship No. 28.
Instead, it lasted about three hours, as the Yankees finally succumbed to an offensive slump that had been trying to kill them for the last two months.
Hosting the American League's win-or-go-home Wild Card Game for the first time, the Yankees succumbed to the Houston Astros, 3-0. Yankee Stadium was loud at the outset, but it fell quiet when Colby Rasmus got the Astros on the board with a leadoff solo home run in the second inning.
The Astros brought home two more runs after that—one on Carlos Gomez's fourth-inning solo homer and another on Jose Altuve's seventh-inning RBI single.
But they didn't need those. As soon as Rasmus' ball cleared the fence, the pressure was on the Yankees to shake the cobwebs off their bats. It's no wonder there was a palpable sense of dread at Yankee Stadium, and it only got stronger as the Yankees tried and failed to do something, anything, on offense.
Lest we get too carried away, though, let's give some credit where credit is due: A fellow named Dallas Keuchel had quite a bit to do with this.
Though he was starting on just three days' rest, Keuchel showed why he may be the man to beat for the AL Cy Young. He allowed only three hits and a walk while striking out seven on his way to six scoreless innings. As Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports noted, it was one of the best starts on three days' rest in recent memory:
Just as noteworthy is that those six scoreless innings made it a total of 22 scoreless innings for Keuchel in three starts against the Yankees in 2015.
As Yankees skipper Joe Girardi said after the game, per USA Today: "We haven't been able to solve Keuchel this year. We haven't been able to do it."
In the Yankees' defense, few have been able to solve Keuchel. Using a Tom Glavine-esque mix of perfect sequencing and location, he racked up a 2.48 ERA in 232 innings in the regular season. If it wasn't already clear before, it should be very clear now that he's one of the best pitchers in baseball.
And now for the obligatory "But..."
In this case, it's easily summarized: That Yankees offense, though.
For a time, the Yankees offense was quite good. Yankees hitters posted an OPS of at least .740 in three of the season's first four months, peaking at over .800 in June and July. It's largely because of this that the Yankees finished in the top five in MLB in runs, home runs and OPS. Bronx Bombers, indeed.
However, all of this might as well be ancient history.
Things started getting messy in August. The Yankees offense posted a season-low .708 OPS—a fall from grace that contributed to a 14-14 record.
“We’re just not hitting,” Girardi told the New York Times at the end of the month. “That’s been the root of our problems.”
Unfortunately, the Yankees couldn't stop the root from growing even deeper. In September and October, the club's OPS plummeted further still to .702 OPS. This time, the cost was a 15-17 showing that made it all too easy for the rip-roaring Toronto Blue Jays to secure the AL East title.
What went wrong, you ask?
Heck, a better question is what didn't go wrong?
After looking nothing like a rickety, old has-been through July, veteran slugger Alex Rodriguez looked everything like a rickety, old has-been in hitting .191 with a .678 OPS after August 1. After missing all of 2014 serving a suspension, it looked like he had just plain run out of gas.
But A-Rod's slump wasn't the only hit the middle of the Yankees' order endured. Mark Teixeira was lost for the season with an injury in late August, robbing the Yankees of a .906 OPS and 31 homers. Slugging rookie Greg Bird did well in his stead, but not that well.
Meanwhile, there were also problems at the top of the order. Brett Gardner had an .835 OPS through the end of July, but he finished the year with just a .742 OPS. Jacoby Ellsbury never looked right after returning from a lengthy injury absence in early July, hitting just .224 with a .601 OPS in his final 74 games.
These issues alone probably would have been enough to sink the Yankees' once-mighty offense. But the problems reached critical mass in the final month of the season. Brian McCann and Chase Headley joined Gardner and Ellsbury on the Yankees' list of non-factors. And though they didn't exactly go cold, previously hot hitters Carlos Beltran and Didi Gregorius definitely cooled off.
And so, there the Yankees were at the arrival of the Wild Card Game. The overall numbers looked good and could indeed be used to talk the Yankees up as a dangerous offensive team reminiscent of the Bronx Bombers of old. But in reality, the Astros were going up against a team that had gone from being rich with dangerous bats to perilously short on dangerous bats.
In times like these, you go looking for a common denominator. The only one in sight is the same fatal flaw that's been a smudge on the Yankees' pinstripes for several years now:
Age.
Rodriguez is 40 years old. Beltran is 38. Teixeira is 35. Gardner, Ellsbury, McCann and Headley aren't quite as old, but they, too, are on the wrong side of 30. They were all part of an offense in which the average age was over 31 for a fourth year in a row.
All of that old age eventually caught up to the Yankees in 2012, which ended with them getting swept in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). It played a part in them missing out in the postseason in 2013 and 2014. Nobody should be surprised, therefore, that the club's hot offensive start this season eventually crumbled. Though it often looked good early, at no point was the Yankees offense built to last.
As a result, the Yankees will now head into the offseason looking to answer the same question they've been trying to answer for several years now: How can they get younger, better and, hopefully, cheaper?
It won't be easy. The Yankees once again spent over $200 million on payroll in 2015. And according to Baseball-Reference.com, they're projected to spend over $200 million on payroll again in 2016. Almost the entire band is set to return, and that will make it difficult to make major changes.
But try the Yankees must. Their fans are not known for their patience, and they are not about to be after the Yankees' return to the postseason was over in a matter of hours. They wanted a bang. What they got was a whimper.
And if the Yankees don't at least fix their offense, they may be in for more of the same in 2016.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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