Hour 2: Poor Yankees Defense

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This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

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**Michael Kay** (0:37)
Welcome back to the show, everybody. So Carlos Mendoza has been let go or as the Mets are putting it into an official statement. They announced the departure of manager Carlos Mendoza. The departure sounds like something nefarious or either a vacation or not. The Yankees lost to the Red Sox 63 So all six runs that the Red Sox scored were unearned. So, Kam Slettler went five innings and Azira went down despite giving up four runs, all of them unearned. And I told you this either the end of last week or the beginning of this week. The margin of error for this Yankee team is so razor thin because of all of the injuries that you can't afford to give a team more than 27 outs. Now, I know the Red Sox didn't bat in the bottom of the ninth inning yesterday, but you get 27 outs over nine innings, right? So essentially, the Yankees officially gave them 31 outs. You can't win games that way, even against an awful team like the Red Sox. And the Yankees rallied in the ninth inning and Chapman actually made a really nice play on a Ben Rice dribbler up the first baseline. You know, with the Yankees, he probably have thrown the ball into right field, bases would have been cleared, game would have been tied, we would have been having a different discussion now. But the scoreboard officially said that the Yankees committed four errors. But you had to watch the game to help tell you how staggeringly awful they were defensively.
Bear with me, let's count starting at four.
So there was a pop up in foul territory on the third base side. Rosario was playing third base. Now he made a legitimate error when the Red Sox scored the four runs against Cam Schlittler. He had a hard ground ball that went through his legs. It would have been an inning ending double play. So that was a legitimate error. But before that, he goes for a pop up and misjudges it and misses it. Who hasn't scored an error was called a no play. That's an error to me. That's an out. That should have been an out. So that's five. Caballero playing left field, out of position, out of necessity.
There's a base hit to left. Red Sox try to score the runner. And Caballero makes an absolutely awful throw up the first baseline. If the throw is on line, the runner is out. Not an error, but to me, a mistake. So let's say six errors for the Yankees. Early in the game. Caleb Durbin hit a pop up between the pitcher's mound and the catcher. Wells went out. Schlutler went in. They both looked at each other. The ball fell. They said, to me, that's an error. That's seven errors in the game. One more? Let's go one more. When the Yankees ended up giving the two more runs to make the game go from 4-3 to 6-3. Ground ball is short.
Anthony Volpe fields, it's kind of a ground ball at the middle. He takes the ball himself at second base, which is the right play. And then he fires an absolute grenade to first base, pulling rice off the bag to the home plate side. Now, you know the old canard, and I hate it, hate it. Well, you can't assume a double play, so you can't give an error. That's an error. If he makes a basic throw, that's an inning-ending double play. Instead, two runs end up scoring. That's the eighth error.
They made eight errors in a game. Eight. Do you realize how unbelievable that is? They let six unearned runs score. And that's the first time a Yankee team has allowed six unearned runs to score, and the team didn't score any earned runs since 19... Wait for it. 13
1913
So with the injuries they have, people are playing out of position. With the players that they have on their team, there are limitations to what they can do.