The New York Yankees faced off against the Chicago Cubs on Friday night and had one of the worst offensive performances of the season. After the game, Yankees manager Aaron Boone got brutally honest about the team.
The Cubs had veteran starting pitcher Jameson Taillon, who had been struggling this season, on the bump to start the game. He came into Friday’s game with a 6.93 ERA, which was the worst of anyone in the MLB with over 60 innings pitched on the year.This meant that the Yankees should have had a great day at the plate.
Instead, it seems like a matchup against the Yankees was exactly what Taillon needed to figure things out.
Taillon dominated the Yankees’ offense all night, throwing eight shutout innings while only allowing one hit and striking out four batters. The Cubs would go on to win 3-0 as the Yankees failed to mount any offense in the ninth inning.
Longtime Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay summed things up perfectly in the bottom of the fourth inning as the Cubs walked off the field following another great inning of pitching from Taillon.
“And the Yankees are getting shutout over four innings by a guy with a 6.93 ERA,” Kay said disappointingly.
Kay was far from the only one upset with the Yankees’ poor offensive performance. Aaron Boone called out his team after the game, saying that they “gotta do better”.
First of all, credit to (Jameson) Taillon, he pitched well,” said Boone in a video shared by SNY Yankees on Twitter. “I thought he commanded the ball well, and how he wanted to. But obviously, we have got to do better. We had some good at-bats mixed in there, but not enough. We gotta mount more than that. It is obviously a struggle for us right now.”
Taillon’s performance puts him in rare company, becoming just the fourth pitcher since 1990 to go at least eight innings with one or fewer hits allowed at Yankee Stadium.
As Boone said, a ton of credit should be given to Taillon for turning around his recent stretch of poor play.
However, it is becoming painfully obvious that the Yankees need star slugger Aaron Judge back in the lineup as soon as possible.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.