Lots of blame being laid for Yankees’ brutal defeat

The record would show that Ron Marinaccio would suffer the loss, as Cubs 7, Yankees 4 on Sunday afternoon would drop his record to 4–4.

And make no mistake: Marinaccio earned his share, allowing all three of those hitters to reach base in the eighth inning, on one hit and two walks, setting the Cubs up a tee.

But there are also games when you wish baseball could somehow tweak the rules and settle losses the way teams share after the season: a full share for some, a half share for others, a quarter for some.

And if this is allowed, we will probably give half of this loss to Marnaccio.

Then we could give a quarter to Gleyber Torres.

And we can give a quarter to Aaron Boone.

And it seems like that would be perfect, and a fair way to apportion blame for this indignant final game going into the All-Star break, a loss that once again knocked the Yankees out of playoff position. , And stays in fourth place – Card Race.

But don’t take my word for it.

Let’s hear from Torres: “I made a mistake. And it cost us the game.”

He has done. And it happened.

Had one out in the seventh. Domingo German had pitched brilliantly for more than six innings and 74 pitches — more about that in a few paragraphs — but Chicago’s Christopher Morrell lofted a single to right off Torres for a textbook 4-6-3 double play. But Torres booted it.

The bases were loaded. And soon a 4-1 game would be tied at 4-4. And… well, you already know the final score.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, “Part of the game is you’re going to make a lot of mistakes.” “He keeps on doing this drama all the time. He didn’t today. It can be possible.”

So give Torres a quarter of the share L.

And now for Boone. Look, he had his reasons for removing the German, and they all make perfect sense, they’re perfectly logical, perfectly reasonable.

The German’s workload has been immense in his last two innings. On the last day before the All-Star break, you like to give your bullpen arms as much work as possible. And the Yankees bullpen has been great.

Good reasons, everyone.

But sometimes it’s helpful to just trust your eyes. And the fact is that if the German wasn’t as on-point as he was two weeks ago in Oakland, he was still pretty good.

He faced the minimum over the first four innings, allowing zero hits. He was still sitting on allowing one hit—and 74 pitches, with the Cubs looking completely helpless—when he advanced to Ian Happ in the seventh.

Boone came out of the dugout. The German is out of the game.

The Yankees were soon out of luck.

Boone later said, “It is understandable to question the decision.”

“It’s a fair question,” he added later. “Domingo obviously threw a great ball.”

It was exactly the kind of maneuver that the Boon detractors—a gathering that grows larger week by week—jumps with glee.

Nor is that class of detractors too enthused by Boone’s always-Pollyanna attitude, even in the face of a loss that’s going to sting for days.

“We’re in it, man!” When Boone was asked to assess how disappointing the first half of the season had been overall, he said with a pleased smile. “It’s the arena! let’s go!”

Aside: Nothing bugs me so much as Boone’s upbeat pink-tinged comments. In times of trouble fans will always yearn for Billy Martin to bench everyone on the field and then beat them all up in the newspapers afterwards. It doesn’t fly in 2023 (and, in fact, it didn’t fly in 1988 or 1985, 1983 or 1979, and barely even flew in 1977). That’s what Boon is for, for better or for worse. A lot of fans despise it. Yankee brass enables it.

Of course, perhaps an hour after Sunday’s finale, Yankee brass fumed when they sacked hitting coach Dillon Lawson, opting to send a few hunks of red meat to the hungry. It is the first time that the Yankees have fired a coach early in the season in nearly 30 years, also the first time that Brian Cashman has done so.

You could argue that the firing is based on merit. you can certainly make a case that Some It had to be done to shake up a team that had been limping on the treadmill for quite some time. You could also argue that Lawson is nothing more than a convenient scapegoat. The next two and a half months will tell us.

“We’re still in a position to do something special and reach all of our goals,” Boon insisted, and he’s right. And the Yankees have a nice launching-pad starting Friday, with series opening against Colorado, Anaheim and Kansas City. But, then again, the Cub should have been just as user-friendly as the landing spots leading up to the brakes. And then a funny thing happened.