What’s wrong with the Yankees? How poor pitching, stalled development and shoddy managing has Bombers reeling

Every loss is a gut punch, every win is like getting teeth pulled. That’s the way things are going for the New York Yankees these days. The Yankees salvaged their three-game series with the Texas Rangers on Wednesday afternoon (NYY 3, TEX 2) in a nail-biter. Trade-deadline pickup David Bednar needed 42 pitches to close out a five-out save. 

“That’s a dawg effort right there,” manager Aaron Boone said after the game. “I love that mentality.”

The win snapped a five-game losing streak, New York’s third losing streak of at least five games in the last two months; that’s one more than they had from 2022-24 combined. The win also prevented the Yankees from falling out of wild card position, at least temporarily. Here are the AL wild card standings entering play Thursday:

1. Boston Red Sox: 64-52 (+2 ½ GB)
2. Seattle Mariners: 62-53 (+1 GB)
3. New York Yankees: 61-54
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4. Cleveland Guardians: 59-55 (1 ½ GB)
5. Texas Rangers: 60-56 (1 ½ GB)

On June 12, the Yankees reached their high-water mark at 17 games over .500 at 42-25. Six straight losses followed, including three consecutive shutouts at one point, and the Yankees are 19-29 since June 12. Only the Washington Nationals (15-30), Colorado Rockies (17-29), Minnesota Twins (18-28), and San Francisco Giants (18-28) have worse records during that time.

Slumps happen, even to the best teams, though this is no longer a little slump. The Yankees have been one of the worst teams in baseball for close to two months, and they’ve gone from seven games up in the AL East to 6 ½ games back. That’s a 13 ½-game swing in roughly one-third of the season. Now they’re trying to hang onto the third wild card spot. It’s been rough.

What’s wrong with the Yankees? A lot, obviously. You don’t lose 29 times in 48 games because one single thing is going wrong. The offense has sputtered at times, the pitching has mostly been horrible, and the decision-making has been questionable at best. Here’s what you need to know about New York’s prolonged slump, and where they go from here.

The co-aces have stumbled

Lefties Max Fried and Carlos Rodón were deserving All-Stars this season. They were both tremendous through June, ranking as two of the best starting pitchers in baseball. Gerrit Cole needed Tommy John surgery in spring training and he is irreplaceable, but Fried and Rodón did excellent work picking up the slack. They really carried the Yankees early on.

Lately though, Fried and Rodón have not just stumbled a bit; they’ve been outright bad for over month. Fried allowed four runs in five innings against the Rangers on Monday. It was the fourth straight start and fifth time in six starts he allowed at least four runs. He missed a start around the All-Star break because of a blister, though his struggles predate that by a few starts.

Rodón, meanwhile, walked more batters (four) than he struck out (three) in five innings of two-run ball Wednesday, and it was his best start since the All-Star break. Here are the before and after numbers for New York’s lefty co-aces:

Fried and Rodón are counted on for both quality and quantity and they are providing neither. Only three times in the last 21 games have the Yankees gotten six innings out of their starter. Seven times the starter failed to complete five innings, which includes a bullpen game as the Yankees managed Fried’s blister. The starters aren’t pitching well and they’re taxing the bullpen.

Reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil made his season debut this past Sunday after suffering a lat strain in spring training. He walked four and allowed five runs in 3 ⅓ innings while on a pitch limit, looking like a pitcher who missed four months and threw only 14 ⅓ minor-league rehab innings. The Yankees can ill-afford Gil needing extended time to round into form.

Cole is done for the season and so is Clarke Schmidt, who appeared to be taking his game to another level before his UCL gave out and he needed the internal brace procedure last month. The Yankees released Marcus Stroman this past weekend because he is no longer effective, even as a back-end innings guy. The rotation depth chart is single-ply thin:

1. RHP Gerrit Cole (out for 2025)
2. LHP Max Fried
3. LHP Carlos Rodón
4. RHP Luis Gil
5. RHP Clarke Schmidt (out for 2025)
6. RHP Will Warren
7. RHP Cam Schlittler
8. LHP Ryan Yarbrough (out with oblique strain)
9. RHP Allan Winans?

Yarbrough recently started throwing in the bullpen and is still a few weeks away. Right now, New York’s rotation to two stumbling aces in Fried and Rodón, a quasi-rehabbing Gil, and two rookies in Warren and Schlittler. Warren has been the club’s best starter over the last few weeks, leading all rookies with 133 strikeouts and has a 3.82 ERA since June 1. 

Brass tacks, Fried and Rodón have to be better. They have contributed to the team’s slide down the standings and, perhaps more than any two players on the roster, can help swing things in the other direction. Pitch better, eat innings, and the Yankees will win more games and have a more rested bullpen. Fried and Rodón are as important as anyone on the roster, including Aaron Judge.

The young position players haven’t taken a step forward

The Yankees have a player development problem. Specifically, they’ve struggled to finish off the development of their young position players at the big-league level. The Yankees are quite good at getting position player prospects to the majors. Turning them into productive players and sustaining that production, however, has been the challenge the last several years.

Shortstop Anthony Volpe, once one of the top prospects in the game, has failed to launch offensively in his three MLB seasons. This year’s 96 OPS+ represents his career-best output, though it is still below league average (100 OPS+) and below the shortstop average (99 OPS+). Eighty-two players have at least 1,500 plate appearances since 2023. Volpe’s ranks:

Objectively, Volpe has been one of the worst hitters among everyday players since his MLB debut three years ago. If any progress has been made at the plate — Volpe does have seven home runs in 19 games since the All-Star break — you have to squint your eyes to see it. The lack of clear-cut offensive development three years into his career is discouraging.

You can live with a poor-hitting shortstop as long as the defense is good. The Yankees did exactly that with Volpe in 2023 and 2024. He won a Gold Glove as a rookie and was again very good in the field in his sophomore season. This year? Not so much. Volpe leads all players, regardless of position, with 16 errors, and the advanced stats have his defense in the tank:

Five of Volpe’s 16 errors have come in the last 17 games and there have been a few other plays along the way that could have been scored errors too. For whatever reason, Volpe has consistently short-hopped throws to first base lately. Veteran first baseman Paul Goldschmidt has gone great work saving plays with scoops over at first, but it hasn’t stopped other teams from trolling on social media.

Give the Yankees a truth serum and I am certain they would tell you this is not the player they expected Volpe to be three years into his MLB career. The bat has not come along, the defense is going backwards and Volpe isn’t even much of a stolen base threat anymore. He’s 14 for 21 (67%) stealing bases in 2025. He’s a player with few redeeming qualities at the moment. It’s bad all around.

Volpe is not the only young Yankee stalling out either. Catcher Austin Wells finished third in the AL Rookie of the Year voting last season thanks to league-average offense (i.e. above average for a catcher) and very good defense. The defense remains excellent. Wells rates as an elite pitch-framer and above-average blocker, and he’s thrown out 28% of basestealers (MLB average: 22%).

The bat, however, has taken a major step backwards, specifically his plate discipline. Wells has already cleared last year’s home run total (15 to 13) in fewer plate appearances (414 to 339), though his overall offense is way down:

The league-average chase rate is 27.8%, so Wells went from several percentage points better than average last year to several percentage points worse than average this year. He’s going out of the strike zone and swinging at more balls, and when you swing at balls, you whiff more, you put yourself in bad counts, and you make weak contact when you get the bat on the ball. 

Whatever the reason, Wells’ plate discipline has taken a step back this year and it is driving his dip in offense. Unlike Volpe, Wells is still giving the Yankees above-average defense, though his appeal as a prospect and as a rookie was the offense he provided at a position not known for offense, and he’s not providing it this season. A disappointing sophomore year for Wells, this is.

To be clear, the Yankees have gotten solid production from top prospect Jasson Domínguez and second-year player Ben Rice. Not all their young players have hit a wall. Rice has a 122 OPS+ against righties. Domínguez has a 118 OPS+ against righties. They’ve both been quality bats on the heavy side of the platoon. Against lefties and on defense though, both leave a lot to be desired.

Volpe and Wells came up through the minors as touted prospects, Volpe especially, and they were expected to become centerpiece players at up-the-middle positions. Instead, Volpe is spinning his wheels offensively and backsliding defensively. Wells is still giving the Yankees very good defense behind the plate, but the bat and plate discipline has taken a step back.

The Yankees have not had a player come up through their farm system and put up a 100 OPS+ (i.e. league-average production) in back-to-back years since Gleyber Torres, who debuted in 2018. That is a long, long time without developing a position player who gives you something on offense for more than one season. Finishing off development has been an issue for a while now.

The manager is a problem

Ultimately, it’s on the players to perform, but Boone is not blameless. In the most basic terms, the manager’s job is to put his team in the best position to win, and Boone often does not do that. Goldschmidt, a 65 OPS+ hitter against righties, still get plenty of starts against righties over Rice, for example. He’s started nine times against 16 righty starters since the All-Star break.

Boone’s recent Devin Williams usage is egregious. Williams blew two straight saves on July 30 and this past Monday. When asked about the closer’s role on Tuesday, Boone said he will play things “night by night,” which is BooneSpeak for “Williams is being demoted.” A reasonable moving considering how Williams has allowed at least a run in six of eight appearances since the All-Star break.

And yet, Boone still used Williams in a high-leverage spot Tuesday. It wasn’t a save situation, but it was the eighth inning of a 0-0 game with the 3-4-5 hitters due up. That situation calls for your best reliever — Bednar, at this point — not one who was demoted from the closer’s role literally that day. A double, two walks, and a single later, the Yankees were down two and Williams took the loss.

“Liked him in that middle with the handful of those righties and obviously just couldn’t finish it off,” Boone explained after the game. “I thought Devin could still get some swing and miss there, but obviously didn’t.”

Again, it is ultimately on the players to perform, but using Williams in that spot Tuesday was a clear example of Boone not putting his team in the best position to win. Was the struggling, demoted closer the best option against the middle of the order in the eighth inning of a 0-0 game? No, not when Bednar is available, and not when Williams has been a liability the last three weeks.

Beyond the individual bullpen and lineup decisions, the Yankees are just so sloppy. They’re sloppy defensively, they’re sloppy on the bases, their attention to details seems nonexistent. We all saw the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series last year. This has gone on for years. The players change but the sloppiness remains. We’re beyond the point of this reflecting poorly on Boone.

The Yankees have to win on pure talent because they are so fundamentally unsound. They throw to the wrong base and miss the cutoff man constantly. They force throws when the defender should eat the ball. They make poor baserunning decisions. They lose the battle on the margins every night. To put it another way: they’re bad at things championship teams aren’t bad at.

Boone is not the problem with the Yankees but, eight years into his tenure as manager, it is getting increasingly hard to see him as part of the solution. Strategic on-field decisions are often questionable and big picture stuff like preparation, fundamentals, and even occasionally effort and compete level are lacking. It reflects terribly on Boone even if it is not all his fault.

So what can the Yankees do about it?

Play better. That’s really all they can do at this point. GM Brian Cashman brought in needed bullpen and bench upgrades at the trade deadline last week and Judge returned from his flexor strain Tuesday. Other than Yarbrough and setup man Fernando Cruz, who’s out with a high-grade oblique strain, the Yankees are as healthy as they’re going to get. This is what they have. This is who they are.

The Yankees have to play better and they also have to take advantage of a schedule that, on paper, is very favorable. Only the Detroit Tigers have an easier remaining schedule among AL clubs. New York will play 23 of their final 47 games against the Twins, Baltimore Orioles, and Chicago White Sox, including their final 10 games. What more could you want from the schedule gods?

Of course, this is the same Yankees team that got swept by the Miami Marlins his past weekend and lost three of four to the Los Angeles Angels last month. Wins against inferior competition are not a given in this league and that is especially true with the way New York’s starters are going, the way they kick the ball around, and the way the manager deploys his players.

The Yankees have had a pattern the last few years: they storm out of the gates and look like the best team in baseball, go into an extended funk at midseason, then rally late to do what they need to do to get to the postseason. Here are their 2023-24 winning percentages:

• April and May: .632
• June and July: .465
• August and September: .519

The Yankees have taken it to the extreme in 2025, but this season fits the pattern. They started well, they’ve stumbled badly during the summer months, and now they have to figure out a way to rally. Wednesday’s win secured the tiebreaker over the Rangers. That is potentially huge. It can’t be a one-off though. The Yankees must start stacking wins and improve in every aspect of the sport.

“Obviously one game. We gotta dig ourselves out here,” Boone said after Wednesday’s win. “As I’ve said, it’s there for us though. We’ve gotta go take this thing. I’m steadfast, I believe have a great run in us, believe in those guys in the room. But as we’ve been saying kinda of every day, right, we gotta go do it.”