This is a different Yankees lineup and look, with George Lombard Jr. flourishing early, Spencer Jones given a runway and Luis García Jr. and Heliot Ramos working themselves into the mix with their new club.
And yet this is the same Yankees problem: a lineup lacking a pulse without the heart of the team.
Hours after Aaron Judge declared he would return at some point this season, the batting order he left behind played as if it wanted to convey to the captain that he better hurry up.
A problem that recently has been partially disguised by excellent pitching and Lombard bursting on the scene had nowhere to hide Wednesday, when the Yankees were silenced 3-1 by the Cardinals in a slog of a game marked by frequent pauses of play and virtually no excitement while the home team was at bat.
The 37,425 on hand in The Bronx waited through a 68-minute rain delay before the game started, then groaned as Yankee Stadium lights continually turned off in the early innings, then ran for cover during a brief sixth-inning downpour, then checked their phones as a Cardinals pitcher slipped on a slick mound in the seventh, prompting the grounds crew to hustle over and rake the dirt.
The few left by the end were not rewarded for their patience as the Yankees (64-51) dropped the series, fell 4 ¹/₂ games back of the Rays and slipped to a single game clear of the Red Sox for the top wild-card spot.
“I thought [Cardinals starter Andre] Pallante was good, but we gotta get it done,” manager Aaron Boone said after his group finished with four hits, none of which arrived with runners in scoring position (0-for-10), and looked as if most of its at-bats came with the lights out. “We got to come through in those situations.”
The Yankees have scored more than five runs in four of their past 43 games, a startling drought regardless of personnel, spanning a stretch in which they are averaging 3.3 runs per game. The entire stretch has come without Judge, whose fractured rib has threatened to derail the team’s season, though Wednesday he began some light activities.
Hollow bats give the pitching staff and defense little margin for error, and Will Warren and arguably Trent Grisham in center field were not perfect.
Warren rolled through four innings before encountering trouble in the game-deciding fifth. With runners on the corners and two outs, young standout JJ Wetherholt put a good swing on a sweeper — “Hindsight, probably throw a different pitch,” Warren bemoaned — that became a high drive to center field.
“Off the bat I thought I had a pretty good chance at it,” Grisham said. “As I was going back, it just kind of kept going.”
Grisham got turned around on the play, then decided to play the ball off the wall. The ball did not hit the wall, short-hopping it and going for a two-run double, which was followed by another double for the only three runs St. Louis would need.
The Yankees had many opportunities in the middle and late innings and wasted them. There was an inning-ending double play from Austin Wells; a near breakthrough in which three walks and a hit by pitch scored one run before Ryan McMahon struck out with the bases loaded; García stranding two with a groundout; and an otherwise exuberant Lombard swinging through Ryne Stanek heat with two runners on board.
Lombard (1-for-4 with a few standout defensive plays again) continues to entertain and inspire hope, but when virtually anyone else was at the plate, the Yankees looked hopeless.
The night’s leadoff hitter, Grisham (0-for-5), is 8-for-71 (.113) in his past 20 games.
Spencer Jones (0-for-4), who had shown enough to keep his big league spot while Jasson Domínguez was optioned, has gone 0-for-15 in his past four games.
Chisholm (0-for-2 with two walks) is 1-for-17 in his past five games.
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Asked what was missing in the threats that did not quite become rallies, Grisham summed it up well: “Hits.”
