Yankees Spanish Voice Rickie Ricardo SOUNDS THE ALARM on Yankees' Collapse!

**Chris McMonigle** (0:00)
Oh, I know this guy likes pina coladas.

**Rickie Ricardo** (0:02)
I like getting caught in the rain.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:05)
You like getting caught in the rain? We just did, yeah. I hope you like it. Ah, Rickie Ricardo here with me, joining us here on The Carton Show. Got you for another 15 minutes or so, taking you to the Yankees baseball at six.
Rickie.

**Rickie Ricardo** (0:17)
Yes, sir.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:18)
Where are we with this team? Obviously, you agree with me. We were just talking about it. As much as you can have a important, like, must-win type, I know we use must-win, it's clearly not must-win, but if you can have a huge series in July, this is it. This is it. And we said it reeks of last year as well. The team in front of them can't win in that building. It sets up a division-likely loss, especially this would be the end of winning the tiebreaker as well. This is a huge, huge four-game set against Tampa. How do they change the way they've played over the last ten games heading into this series against Tampa?

**Rickie Ricardo** (0:49)
Well, if I could figure that out...

**Chris McMonigle** (0:52)
What do they have to do, Rickie? Tell me!

**Rickie Ricardo** (0:54)
You're absolutely right. If there is such a thing as a big series in the month of July, right on the cusp of the all-star break, it's this one.
The Rays are playing the role of last year's Toronto Blue Cays. Absolutely, yep. The Yankees got swept in that building at the TROP. Now, why am I not at the TROP, you ask? When they redesigned the building after the hurricane, they made the other booths bigger and kind of eliminated the booth that we would have used for the Spanish broadcast. So, you know, I'm doing it from here, folks. The funny thing is I live half hour from the TROP and I got to do these games from New York. Having said that, this is a big series.
The minimum of split here?

**Chris McMonigle** (1:38)
They have to. That's where I'm at too. And it's a pessimistic view, but it's got to be at minimum. You can't leave this series worse off than when you entered it. You just can't. You can't be further away.

**Rickie Ricardo** (1:49)
When Judge got hurt, and I think everything will filter back to that. When Judge got hurt, we leaned on the superior starting pitching.
Gerrit Cole came back. I think it was unfair of us to expect to get, just like that, the Gerrit Cole of old.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:07)
We kind of did though, in his first two starts, he was excellent.

**Rickie Ricardo** (2:11)
We got spoiled by it.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:11)
And he's kind of worked his way through it since, but hit the scene as good as ever.
You almost wish it was the other way, where he struggled, and then you saw him get better. It's easier to understand that. We can process that easier. But there is no way to process it. There's no clear cut how you handle it. He's coming back from Tommy John. It's going to take some time, clearly.

**Rickie Ricardo** (2:36)
We've seen pitchers, Chris. We've seen some of the better pitchers in baseball that have come back from Tommy John, not really get back to being themselves until the following season. I'm not saying it's going to take Cole that long, but I thought it was unfair of us, you know, and I'm looking at myself in the mirror here and I thought the same thing, oh, it's Cole, he's back, he's the same guy, he's the better version of Cole even from last year.
That's unfair. We need to let him get his sea legs under him. Carlos Rodin now with the inflammation in the elbow, who knows how long that's going to take. I don't like, and maybe I'm completely off, but I've called every pitch of Cam Schlittler's Major League career. His last two or three starts, his body language just doesn't feel right to me. I don't know if he's hit a wall of some sort, what the issue is, he's still smoked, the ball is still 98, 99, the stuff is there, but some of it is as straight as a string, and I'm watching guys catch up to him. Now, remember, there is the so-called book in baseball, and maybe it's just the natural order of other teams and scouts, and they've done their work on him, and now it's up to him to adjust. It works for hitters and it works the same for pitchers. It's him now needing to adjust to the adjustments that have been made to him. He is a sharp enough guy, he's a smart enough guy, Matt Blake is one of the better pitching coaches in all the Major League Baseball.