Hour 2: C-Mac Defends Aaron Boone Amid Yankee Offensive Struggles

**Chris McMonigle** (0:00)
Ah, yes, sir! I don't know why you say goodbye either. I'll never figure that out. 888-808-1019, McMonigle here with you for the rest of the last stop of The Carton Show. Taking it till 7 o'clock right here on The Fan, taking your calls off the Yankee loss. And again, we talked about it, frustrating loss, an opportunity to sweep, pitching staff gives up one run, and the Yankees cannot get a run across. They lose one nothing in the finale to the Mariners. They did take two out of three, and look, I think it's fair to look at it both ways. They've been winning. They haven't been winning at the clip of the raise, and to win at the clip of the raise, or to make up the seven games in the loss column that they have to make up on the raise, two out of three ain't good enough. To hold off the Red Sox, maybe it will be, to make the playoffs, almost certainly it will be. They've been winning. They've been winning series.
There's 17 and 11 in their last 28 games. There's six games over 500 They just had a winning home stand. The sky is not falling. Having said that, this offense isn't good enough to rattle off five, six, seven in a row. And if you want to catch down the hottest team in baseball that right now has the best record in all of baseball, not the American League, the best record in all of baseball, you have to string together winning streaks. And this offense, off of last night scoring 10 runs, and the at bats that Jones had, and the at bats that Grisham had, and the walk to Jazz, and the way they came back down 3-0 immediately thinking, well, there goes that game. Hopefully, they can win with Max Fried on the mound tomorrow. Idiots, we are.
They come right back, score 10 runs. Grisham hits a big home run late even to make it a five run game, so you don't have to use Bednar, which helps you set up for today in a close game. And still can't put momentum together. Back to back final games of the series against Atlanta and now Seattle where they had a chance to sweep and carry a winning streak into the next series and the offense comes up small. And Ben Rice is the culprit. As the caller mentioned earlier, he's right. Ben Rice has not been good enough. We can love him all we want and I still do. I think very highly of him and I have a lot of confidence in him, but he's had a lousy stretch since the All-Star break. And Jazz Chisholm has been awful. And we've already seen him not play against tough lefties like Chris Hale. We've already seen him be pinch hit late in the game for a left-handed pitcher.
He is no longer the everyday without question, righty, lefty, doesn't matter, second baseman for this team. And he's earned that. He's earned not being that guy.
And the way he's swinging and missing, it's killing the team. McMahon's actually been better. Now, do you expect, like, again, has he been great at the bottom? No, but McMahon's been better. He came through with a couple of good at bats last night. Wells has been better. Still not great, but those are the bottom of the order guys who you knew weren't going to be very good, and Wells' case not very good, but not the worst hitter in baseball. But you expected certain guys to be able to step up. Rice being one of them, and Jazz being one of them. Those are the guys I hold most accountable, because they're supposed to help carry this team, not just be role players.
Not just be, hey, maybe he hit some home runs, and he's really good defensively, and that should help the team. That's not what Jazz is. That's not what Rice is.
Garcia's been doing his job as a guy they traded for to bring in here. He's been good having doubles every night. Ramos has been terrible, he's been awful coming over, but again, when they're healthy, he's a role player. He's not in the starting outfield when Judge and Bellinger come back. He's an off the bat, right handed bat, who can be your fourth outfielder. So does he stink right now? Yeah, but again, what do I hold him to? Better than two for 19 or whatever he is, but ultimately not a key cog of this team. Rice is.
Jazz is supposed to be. Wake up. Because you're pitching, and here's the difference too. I know Craig wants to say into the postseason, you can't win this way. Yeah, you can't. You can't win scoring one or two runs. Absolutely. They're going to have to do better than that. But with this pitching, can they win scoring three, four?