Yankees: Houston we have a problem

In the Wild Card game that was played last night, the Yankees were on the leash of Dallas Keuchel. The ace of the Astros limited the Yankees to three hits. The Yankees went 0 for 2 with runners in scoring positon and that says it all.

Of course as a fan you have some hope that the play offs are a different ball game, but the way the Yankees have been staggering towards the finish line, one could expect the outcome a little bit.

Dallas Keuchel went six innings in which he walked one and struck out seven. His counterpart, Masahiro Tanaka went five innings in which he gave up two runs (both solo homeruns) on four hits. He walked as many as he struck out: three. Dellin Betances, who is the first half of the solid 1-2 punch with Andrew Miller normally, gave up another run in 1.2 innings. He struck out four but gave up the run as Jonathan Vilar (who replaced Chris Carter, who drew a walk off Betances), scored from second base on Jose Altuve’s line drive to left field.

As told above, the Yankees were limited to three basehits. Didi Gregorius hit one of them as he hit a lead off ground ball single towards right field in the sixth inning. Didi was also part of two double plays: 3-6-1 and 6-4-3.

Once again I can only say that the Yankees did a lot better than most expected at the start of the season. But clearly the season was a bit too long for this team. The team was streaking at times, with winning streaks and losing streaks as well.

I tip my cap to Joe Girardi, for guiding this team to the play offs with the various injuries that hit the club, but I have to say that in the last few weeks, it seemed that he was relying on the long ball too much. At times you have to produce runs but playing small ball. The Yankees have some speedy players to play that kind of game.

I hope that the front office sticks to the rebuilding mode they have adopted. We have seen some promising kids being called up from the minors, who did a decent job: Rob Refsnyder, Greg Byrd, to name a few. Refsnyder, who was known to be a notorious bad fielder, didn’t commit an error in the games that he played with the Yankees.

The following won’t come as a surprise, but I enjoyed watching Didi Gregorius growing as a player. Where he struggled in the first two months of the season in which he committed the most of his fielding errors, he got better in the remainder of the season, finishing the regular season with a batting average of .265. Where I noticed that he often swung at the first pitch (just like Derek Jeter did), he did do this a lot less at the end of the season.

Now let’s see what the off season will bring. I don’t expect the Yankees to make big splashes, but you’ll never know.