Judge & Soto Continue To Romp, But Yankees Are Spinning Out Of Control

Despite elite play from Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, the Yankees have completely stalled in June. After a torrid start to the season, the team’s skid continued Wednesday when the Mets capped off a Subway Series sweep with a dominant 12-2 victory.

There’s always silver linings. Judge hit his 30th home run of the season Wednesday, accounting for both of the Yankees’ runs in the 12-2 loss. The night before, he hit a grand slam to tighten the score to two, though the Mets held on to win 9-7. Soto also hit a home run in the Tuesday game and is currently batting .305.

“It’s baseball,” Judge said after the loss Wednesday. “We play 162 of these things. You are going to have, throughout the season, good times, bad times. But we just have to keep showing up, keep working and we will be where we want to be.”

Judge, the team’s superstar in the midst of another historic season, may be patient as the Yankees struggle. Beyond their top pair, however, the Yankees are failing on a categorical level, proving inept at the plate and extremely shaky on the mound. They are 3-8 in their last 11 games and only a game ahead of the Orioles in the A.L. East division.

Two losses to the Mets would have been tougher to take a month ago, before the Yanks’ crosstown rivals rallied around the power of McDonald’s mascot Grimace and exploded back into playoff contention. Still, with Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil on the mound for two nights at Citi Field, a pair of crushing defeats was not an acceptable result.

In two starts since returning from injury, Cole has contributed to two Yankees losses and earned a 9.00 ERA. Gil, the rising star who took the league by storm through early June, has allowed 12 earned runs in his last two starts, a 17-5 Orioles victory and 12-2 Mets victory. His ERA has ballooned from 2.03 to 3.15 since June 20.

Key contributors around Judge and Soto in the lineup are also coming up woefully short. Third baseman D.J. LeMahieu is batting .172 in June and has proven highly inconsistent in the field. Gleyber Torres, who is playing for his spot on the team in many ways, is batting .176 in the same span. Sluggers Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton are both out with injuries.

The only reason New York still has control of the A.L. East is because Baltimore has also lost momentum in recent weeks. The team will be looking at a Wild Card spot within a week if it can’t turn things around.