The Yankees came into Monday night hitting.202 with a.653 OPS, riding a five-game losing streak and staring at a lineup that had scored only 13 runs during that slide. That was the backdrop for their game against the Angels, and it left Aaron Boone doing early-season triage in the dugout.
Ryan McMahon was batting.114 with 15 strikeouts before the game, while Trent Grisham was at.133 with no home runs. Boone said the club had to be mindful of the first month of the season, but he also said it was always necessary to take stock and evaluate where players were and where they were going. Amed Rosario could also see more playing time at third base if the Yankees keep searching for answers there.
The numbers matter because this is not how the Yankees expected to look after spending the winter trying to run it back from a season in which they led the sport in nearly every offensive category. Judge was coming off a third MVP season, Cody Bellinger arrived on a five-year, $162.5 million deal, and the team brought back Grisham on a $22.025 qualifying offer after he hit 34 home runs with an.811 OPS last year. McMahon was acquired with the expectation that his.208 average and.641 OPS in the Bronx last season would not be the high-water mark.
There is still context inside the slump. The current numbers are only a 15-game snapshot, and cold weather last week offered a convenient excuse for the slow start. But the Yankees are 8-7, not buried, and the concern is less about the record than about how quickly the lineup can stop looking like a collection of regression cases.
That is the tension now. Grisham had four home runs, 10 RBIs and a 1.139 OPS through 15 games last season, a pace that made his current zero-homer start stand out even more. McMahon is owed $32 million through 2027, so the Yankees cannot simply wait forever for a turnaround. For a team built to score, the next stretch is already about whether this is a bad week or the first real sign that last year’s offense was harder to repeat than it looked.
