{"id":200159,"date":"2026-04-17T00:22:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T00:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/200159\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T00:22:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T00:22:36","slug":"david-lennon-angels-expose-yankees-troubling-trends-in-the-bronx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/200159\/","title":{"rendered":"David Lennon: Angels expose Yankees’ troubling trends in the Bronx"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the record, the Yankees split this week\u2019s four-game series with the Angels, the result of being on the wrong end of Thursday\u2019s 11-4 beatdown in the Bronx, and that doesn\u2019t sound\u00a0half bad.<\/p>\n

A deeper look reveals a few sobering truths, however, which Aaron Boone & Co. weren\u2019t in the mood to come clean about afterward.<\/p>\n

If not for the Angels\u2019 charitable closer Jordan Romano, and LA\u2019s clueless infielders botching Wednesday\u2019s pop-up<\/a> that\u2019s caught 99.999% of the time, the Yankees very likely get swept instead. After a 7-1 start, they\u2019ve now dropped to one game over .500 (10-9) after the Angels bludgeoned them for 13 homers in the series, including five by Mike Trout that amounted to a whopping total of 2,127 feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we haven\u2019t been playing to our standards,\u201d said Max Fried, who allowed five earned runs over 5 1\/3 innings, ending a personal nine-game winning streak that stretched to last season. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, the Yankees might need some smelling salts, because they were knocked around their own building for the past four days. One of the indelible images was Tuesday\u2019s starter Ryan Weathers giving up three straight first-inning homers (on just five pitches) in that eventual 7-1 loss. But there were plenty other troubling takeaways, many involving a hapless bullpen<\/a> that was dented for 14 runs over their 17 innings of this series.<\/p>\n

Too often, this was batting practice for the Angels, who either dunked timely hits between defenders or blasted pitches over the wall. What had to make this particularly painful was the Oswald Peraza Revenge Tour, as the former Yankees\u2019 prospect — traded at last season\u2019s deadline — smacked a two-run homer off Fried in the first inning and finished him with a tying RBI double in the sixth.<\/p>\n

For the series, Peraza went 5-for-10 with a pair of homers and four RBIs, playing third base at a time when the Yankees can barely afford to use the struggling Ryan McMahon — owed $32 million through next season — at the same position. Over his seven games, Peraza is hitting .368 (7-for-19) with two doubles and three homers. McMahon, who sat Thursday, is batting .119 without an extra-base hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked like what we were excited about several years ago,\u201d Boone said of Peraza, \u201cand then obviously went through a couple of years of really struggling. So he\u2019s super-talented, always has been. Clearly he\u2019s in as good as a place as he\u2019s been in a few years and he absolutely hurt us this series.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not quite as much as Trout. No one did more to humiliate the Yankees\u2019 pitching staff this week, as the Angels\u2019 own three-time MVP outshined the one wearing pinstripes by becoming the first visiting player to ever go deep during four consecutive days in the Bronx. He\u2019s now reached base in 31 of his 34 career games at Yankee Stadium, with 13 homers, 26 RBIs and a slash line of .346\/.433\/.731.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy at-bats felt great,\u201d Trout said. \u201cThey felt better as each game went on.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason why Judge referred to Trout as the \u201cgreatest of all time\u201d<\/a> after the two future Hall of Famers each hammered a pair of homers in Monday\u2019s 11-10 slugfest, a victory the Yankees lucked into by Romano spiking a wild pitch that allowed the walkoff run to score in the ninth. But the Angels are not a team that should be pushing around Boone\u2019s crew, especially in the Bronx, and definitely not by throwing a bullpen game for the series finale.<\/p>\n

The Yankees erased Fried\u2019s early 2-0 deficit in a blink when Judge drilled a one-out homer in the first inning and Giancarlo Stanton followed with a two-run blast in the third. Once that happened, with Fried retiring 13 of 14, the Yankees seemed to be in good shape, considering they were 53-7 (including the postseason) in games when Judge and Stanton both homered.<\/p>\n

But not this time. All they got the rest of the way was Ben Rice\u2019s leadoff homer in the sixth, after the Angels already had taken a 6-3 lead. What followed was Angel Chivilli throwing one too many changeups to Trout, who took him deep on the third one of his at-bat in the seventh, and Ryan Yarbrough teeing up Jo Adell\u2019s grand slam that iced it in the eighth.<\/p>\n

It was a strange sight, seeing the Yankees repeatedly throttled by the long ball in their own building, and ultimately unable to throw enough punches to counter.<\/p>\n

\u201cLosses are losses,\u201d Stanton said of the beatings the Yankees absorbed. \u201cHowever it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

They all count the same standings. But some are more revealing than others, and Boone evidently had seen enough when he got tossed for arguing a balk call in the eighth. All the balk did was free up first base so the Yankees could intentionally walk Trout anyway, and then Adell followed with the slam, adding insult to injury. Who could blame Boone for being steamed?<\/p>\n

\u201cI still haven\u2019t got good clarity,\u201d Boone said later, \u201cbecause of course they got overly sensitive when I was as calm as could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Yankees don\u2019t snap out of this recent funk, which has contaminated nearly everyone not named Judge, things are going to get bumpy in the Bronx with this weekend\u2019s visit by the Royals. Maybe the ultra-upbeat Boone will stay cool, but the Stadium could be boiling around him.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball’s Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the record, the Yankees split this week\u2019s four-game series with the Angels, the result of being on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,321,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-200159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-yankees","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-the-bronx","14":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","15":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}