After Doing Nothing Against Houston's Jason Alexander, Yankees Retain Their Optimism

Forbes

3 days ago

Jason Alexander is an actor best known for playing the short stocky character George Costanza on NBC's Seinfeld from 1990 through 1998 in a comedic run where he spent a few seasons portraying the assistant traveling secretary for the Yankees.
In the world surrounding the Yankees, Jason Alexander is a 32-year-old pitcher who spent eight seasons in the minors and made their latest loss a show about nothing.
Alexander's mix of changeups and sinkers were not really nothing but the continuation of two-plus bad months and it started before he threw any of his 87 pitches. The Yankees were playing uphill Jose Altuve homered on the first pitch, getting his 250th career homer mere moments after fans kept booing him Sunday for his role in the 2017 cheating scandal.
The minute Altuve clobbered a misplaced Max Fried fastball into the left field seats for only his 15th career regular-season homer against the Yankees, it was an uphill climb of nothingness with the at-bats, especially after a 25-pitch first inning.
So little was happening for the Yankees that Alexander was inching closer to qualifying in the categories 'pitched a no-hitter/Astros' in the popular immaculate grid until Ben Rice singled with one out in the sixth and that was negated by Aaron Judge hitting into a double play.
It was a rough weekend for the Yankees yet again as they heard pointed criticism from some of their former players ahead of a ceremony honoring the 2000 championship team, a group who figured out how to survive going from 22-9 to 37-35 and ending the season with a 3-15 finish.
Altuve factored into both losses, hitting homers on the first pitch he saw and the Astros won a second straight series after not helping the Yankees by getting swept in Boston last weekend.
'We're feeling good as a team,' Altuve said. 'It seems like everything is clicking together.'
Altuve was on base four times Sunday and eight times in the three games, which ended images of a few fans wearing bags on their head and the Yankees dropping to 6 1/2 games out of first, matching their largest deficit since losing their grip on the AL East lead on July 1.
Since they were last atop the division, the Yankees are 14-19 in their past 35 games. They are 2-7 since making seven trades, resulting in three new relievers and since holding their seven-game lead after beating the Los Angeles Angels on May 28, their mark is 27-36.
Any way the numbers get broken down, it is a sustained bad stretch for the Yankees, who were 49-49 in their final 98 games last season and reached the World Series.
We're just not playing good baseball,' said Aaron Judge during a session with the media where he paused a few times before answering. 'I wouldn't say guys are 'feeling it,' we have a tough group in here. It does not feel good losing."
The unsightly loss was the sixth time in eight games the Yankees were held to three runs or less and 11th time since they last led the division. The Yankees are hitting .216 since returning from the All-Star break with the likes of Cody Bellinger 4-for-28 in his past seven games, Austin Wells 7-for-54 in his past 15 games to name a few.
'We have a few guys that need to get on track and are scuffling,' Boone said.
It left the Yankees falling back on expressing their platitudes while acknowledging they actually need to get it done.
'I wholeheartedly believe that we are going to get rolling and turn this thing around,' Boone said. 'And when it does, then you really start to build that next layer of confidence where guys are kind of feeding off each other. But it's all just talk right now. But that's how I feel about it. We got to go do it.'
It remains unknown if the Yankees will start living up to the final part of Boone's comment. To reach 35 wins in 55 games, the Yankees won 16 of 20. If they repeated their performance from May 6-28, while playing the Twins, Cardinals, Rays, Red Sox, Nationals and White Sox it would boast their record to 78-60 by the start of September and perhaps then they can start making comments about things are clicking like Altuve did after reaching a milestone.