Everything the Yankees are doing is awful

The New York Yankees have had a pretty putrid start to their 2016 season. They’re seven games below .500, and their record of 8-15 has them in last place in the AL East. When a team does this badly, it’s not usually just one thing. So what’s failing the Yankees?

On the hitting side, things are fairly bleak. Aside from Starlin Castro, who is having a blistering start to the season (he’s currently hitting .314/.352/.500), most of the Yankees’ lineup is underperforming. Catcher Brian McCann’s overall numbers look decent (.262/.360/.415), but he’s currently mired in a 3-for-19 slump over his last six games. First baseman Mark Teixeira showed a spark during the Yankees’ series with the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers a few weeks ago, hitting .391 over six games, but he’s cooled right back down. Shortstop Didi Gregorius hasn’t been able to find any consistency either, his average plummeting to .221 after an impressive first week.

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Second baseman Chase Headley’s hitting has been utterly woeful. His triple slash is .156/.267/.156 and his average hasn’t been above .200 yet this season. He has 10 hits, and they’ve all been singles. (Yikes.) Designated hitter Alex Rodriguez is doing only slightly better, hitting .203/.286/.464. There is one bright spot for A-Rod: over his last four games, he hit .429 and knocked three home runs, so he could be heating up.

As a team, the Yankees are hitting .234/.305/.365, which is 14th in the AL and 24th in all of baseball. With runners in scoring position, they’re doing even worse, hitting just .203/.291/.350, 27th in MLB.

But their issues don’t stop with hitting, as the Yankees’ starting pitching hasn’t been sparkling, either. The combined ERA of their starting pitchers is 5.16, 27th out of 30 teams, and they’re also 27th in innings from their starters with 129. The bullpen hasn’t been as bad — their 4.13 ERA places them 20th out of 30 teams.

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Excluding Masahiro Tanaka (2.87 ERA), the rest of their starters haven’t been pitching well at all. C.C. Sabathia and Nathan Eovaldi both have ERAs over 5 (5.06 and 5.46 respectively), while Michael Pineda and Luis Severino both have ERAs over 6 (you really don’t want to see them). In fact, out of those four starters, only Nate Eovaldi has pitched a scoreless outing in 2016, and only he has pitched beyond the sixth inning.

It’s pretty hard for a team to do well when both parts of their game are failing them. And unfortunately, there’s no rest in sight. The Yankees start a three-game series with the second place Baltimore Orioles today, and over the weekend they face the first place Boston Red Sox again. Then next week they take on the Kansas City Royals (AKA the defending World Series champions), and after that they have a three-game series with the shockingly good Chicago White Sox. If the Yankees don’t start to figure things out, this tough stretch of games could have them falling even further behind.

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