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<\/p>\nNEW YORK \u2014 Aaron Judge didn\u2019t try to sidestep the truth: He\u2019s been struggling badly on offense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not doing nothin\u2019 at the plate,\u201d Judge said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re doing right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge was far from the only culprit, going 0-for-4 with a strikeout in the New York Yankees\u2019 uninspired 2-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Yankees collected just three hits and struck out a whopping 14 times, with Jazz Chisholm Jr. contributing four of his own. Ben Rice, Paul Goldschmidt and Anthony Volpe each fanned twice. The Yankees went 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position and left five runners on base. New York struck out 11 times Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The defeat evened a four-game series that the Yankees started with two wins. It also meant that New York would go into Friday hosting the East division-leading Tampa Bay Rays with their best player scuffling along with the rest of the offense, which was beaten via a bullpen game Thursday while starting pitcher Carlos Rod\u00f3n gave up one run over five innings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n A dejected Yankees dugout looks on in the ninth inning of the Blue Jays\u2019 2-0 win. (Ishika Samant \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Judge hasn\u2019t homered \u2014 or even driven in a run \u2014 in 10 games. He entered the night hitting .206 (7-for-34) with far more strikeouts (12) than walks (five) over the previous nine games. On Thursday, he struck out looking in the first inning, grounded out to shortstop in the third inning and popped out to second base in the sixth. In the eighth, he grounded weakly into a double play.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the deal?<\/p>\n
Judge said he didn\u2019t think his trouble was with seeing the ball. Rather, he said, it was \u201cmaking sure we\u2019re swinging at the right pitches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manager Aaron Boone said he thought Judge was \u201cjust going through a little bit right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually that means good things are coming on the other side,\u201d Boone continued. \u201cSo, a little in between, probably. Fastballs got on him. A little out in front on some other pitches. Usually, anytime a hitter goes through it a little bit, it\u2019s usually timing related, and I think that\u2019s all it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
It comes after Judge won his third American League MVP last year, hitting 53 home runs with MLB bests in batting average (.331), on-base percentage (.457) and OPS (1.144). The output helped him swipe the award from Seattle Mariners\u2019 Cal Raleigh, who hit 60 home runs, the most for a catcher.<\/p>\n
Even with his cold stretch, Judge has been one of the game\u2019s most productive hitters. His .935 OPS is seventh best in baseball, and his 16 home runs are tied for third most with Rice. Rice has taken over for now as the Yankees\u2019 most productive bat with a 1.029 OPS that\u2019s the best in the sport.<\/p>\n
But the rest of the Yankees\u2019 offense has especially been in the dumps. Over the last 15 days, Yankees hitters have a weak .660 OPS, and they have scored just 50 runs \u2014 21st in the game over that span.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s all happening with the Rays looming. The Rays swept the Yankees in three games at Tropicana Field on April 10-12, though the final scores were close. Two games were decided by one run, and another was decided by two. Tampa Bay has won its last four games and eight of its last 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime you\u2019ve got a hot team coming in, it\u2019s going to make it tough,\u201d said Judge, whose team is 4 1\/2 games back of Tampa Bay. \u201cEspecially a hot team like that where they took care of business when we were in Tampa when we last saw them. We\u2019ve just got to tighten up a couple of things here with us and we\u2019re right where we need to be. The offense isn\u2019t too far off. We get a couple timely hits and add in a couple walks when we need (them), and some good things are going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boone said he thought good things were going to happen in short order for Judge, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019ll get through it,\u201d the manager said, \u201cand someone will pay the price real soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Aaron Judge didn\u2019t try to sidestep the truth: He\u2019s been struggling badly on offense. \u201cI\u2019m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,2704,85],"class_list":["post-687619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}