Drama around Yankees swirling during another Summer swoon

Yankees anemic offense flops again and latest loss to rival race That's the headline of our Yankees beat writer for the post Greg Joyce's article that's up on the website Go check it out But that's the least of the Yankees problems right now So the man the myth the author Greg's here to talk all things Yankees live from down in st. Pete, Florida Greg appreciate you hopping on with us love the read now Let's tell the people all about Yankees baseball in the state of it right now It seems like this team's bats always start the season off just hot and then they cool down in the summer 45 strikeouts I believe in three games this series How much longer of watching bad offensive baseball do fans have to suffer and what's the cause of this recent slump? Yeah, well, it's not gonna get any easier today because they have to face a raised all-star drew Rasmussen who is usually, you know pitch pretty well against them including 13 shutout in this season. So you know the thing is like They have all these guys struggling at the same time and it's not like they have anybody You know on the on the cusp of returning Aaron judge and John Carlos and aren't close to coming back with helping them So and you know the trade deadlines still a couple weeks away and usually don't see guys moved until closer to the deadline So, you know in the immediate it's gonna have to come from within and get some guys You know out of these deep slumps You know Paul Goldschmidt Who for for most of the first three months of the season was was playing at a really high level and the kind of nice Surprise is open 34 Cody Bellinger who's going to the all-star game at a great first two plus three months He's in a deep slump himself. I think it's a for his last 70 Ben Rice kind of seems to be coming out of his slump, but like he's the only guy that that has been providing some fear You know, the only thing they're doing consistently is just not hitting like, you know You get some bad pitching performances here and there and some better ones a little bit, you know It's not cancer. So they're basically win them a game on Monday night to you know, make a couple home runs stand up Eric all pitch well last night, but it didn't matter because The offense couldn't do anything. So it's been rough. There's no there's no None of it's been good. They've been striking out a lot struggling to put the ball in play Like you said, you know, I think they only have two walks in the series And usually that's part of their DNA is You know kind of controlling the strike zone and working tough bad So it's all bad right now for the offense You talk about guys stepping up from within and a guy that I would hope would have Stepped up since he got caught up from triple-a. That's Anthony Volpe He's another headline to a recent article that you wrote and a major Storyline here in New York for like the third straight year The headline is fiery Anthony Volpe hits back at rumors of Yankees position switch drama It's just kind of BS. So can you give us? Everything, you know about Anthony Volpe either wanting or not wanting to play another position outside of shortstop You got the exclusive you got a chance to talk to him. So what do you say about that? Yeah, so for a guy who's pretty, you know, you know usually soft-spoken And fairly reserved in his comments to the media. He talked to you know All the words that were here yesterday at the chop and he was pretty passionate you know pretty human kind of felt like his his character was coming under attack just because of you know, if he The story that he had refused to play second base like that's that would have been a bad look And I think he he knows how I would have looked in the clubhouse He said he hopes that his teammates like know that his character and I haven't been here for three plus years now he says that That you know while he was coming back from his shoulder surgery and the offseason He kept on checking in with team like what do you want for me? Where do you know for a while? All I can do is take round balls and kept on asking like where do you want me to take them? Like what do you want the message was consistently shortstop? I'll see Jose Caballero played, you know Really at a really high level the first month of the season while both he was still finishing off his rehab That kind of changed those plans And then he said that you know when they he claims that when they started, you know Talk about maybe plants about their positions. He told them he would do anything He said he even told Aaron Boone before he got off from that He would play catcher because I think at that point it was clear that he wasn't gonna come back to play shortstop Obviously then Caballero gets injured Hope he gets called up to play shortstop and then when Caballero was coming back Then they start to talk more about maybe, you know Introducing some other positions which won't be has taken ground balls at second base on occasion when he's not been in the lineup But it hasn't gotten to a point yet where they're comfortable putting him there in a game I don't think especially just because they have other guys, you know If you're gonna play anybody at second base other than Jess Chisholm, Jose Caballero has some history there They feel more comfortable moving him there at this point. Maybe that changes down the road, especially next year For Volpe, but he was pretty, you know, he was passionate and kind of defending himself Talking about how he'll do anything to help the team win and he knows that it's been a struggle For the better part of you know for all the season and really since he's been up, you know we've seen flashes of a great player there and put a lot more kind of, you know, deep deep spirals of You know zeros offensively and some some bad defense Especially late, you know during the summer last year. So yeah, I mean it was I thought it was kind of a human moment for him But I'm kind of being real and you know defending himself. He's pretty passionate. So Yeah, it's obviously we'll see how they handle it moving forward. But at this point, it doesn't seem like there's there's anything Imminent on him playing any other position than shortstop look I love the passion but you know of all people this here is New York He's a Yankee passion can turn to frustration and we've seen fans and players get frustrated now It looks like the coaches are starting to lose their cool and we saw Wednesday night Aaron Boone and bench coach Brad awesomeness both got ejected in the sixth inning Is this slump or I guess this string of bad baseball in your opinion? Starting to get to Aaron Boone and is that a bad look for the franchise with everything that's going on right now? Yeah, I think it was a frustration on a couple levels last night They were upset with the umpire and crew on Monday when they didn't allow Jason Dominguez to challenge the pitch Which happened last month at Yankee Stadium same same umpire and crew So there's some history there that had kind of been simmering a little bit But I do think you know the Yankees playably also kind of played a factor in that frustration And then you know kind of boiled over last night when they tried to challenge a play at second base They were told that they were too late Boone did say he regretted getting tossed there because you know, he didn't know that Brad awesomeness had gotten ejected first and then he went on to argue Boone did and got ejected himself He said if you know He said he can't get tossed there once Brad gets tossed Maybe you know that awesomeness was the one that got ejected first You know, he's got to do a better job of staying in the game He said he made it personal which he didn't want to you know, it doesn't want to do there But you know at that point then all of a sudden you lose your manager and your bench coach You know, there's ways for for them to still You don't have a hand at the game the last couple innings But yeah, obviously not a great look especially with what the Yankees are going through and you know, sometimes you see a manager You know get ejected to try to spark his team. I don't think that Necessarily this it was just some frustration with the Empire crew. But yeah, even Boone admitted Larry Regretted that it was not the right move Let's talk about what they're going through 11 losses in their past 13 games They've now dropped to five games back of the race for the division lead Trade deadline. It's like not around the corner, but it's it's not coming up, but it's like around the corner it feels like Is there anyone out there that you think the Yankees need to target to come in and maybe help clean this mess up? Yeah, so the MLB drafted this weekend and usually once you get past that then the trade very chatter starts to pick up a little bit more ahead of the August 3rd deadline, so You know, maybe by next week. There's some more realistic conversations starting to happen You know their list of needs you talk about that you're you know, somebody who can bring some offense from that position See, you know, they it seemed like all I need some bullpen help even though the bullpen has actually been okay But you know, they they certainly need some reinforcements there, especially with Carlos Adrani probably being out for a year Triple-a You know, you wonder about the rotation They've you know Carlos Rodon Was a lot of the most recent one to go on the injured list It's still a max breed on the injured list Those two guys can come back from you know, maybe by early August from the IL but they got to get you know Another month maybe until then today They're using a bullpen game that in they thought that would give a better chance to win than a guy from triple-a so, you know do they need a guy that they can plug into the rotation for at least until they get a little bit healthier and Then like do they do they add an infielder, you know on the left side to kind of help with some of the issues there So I think the biggest one is, you know, most obvious one is a catcher, you know I people you know have pointed to Ryan Jeffers from the Twins a guy who's hit Well this year. The only thing is he's he's currently on a rehab assignment broken a maple and Sometimes it takes guys to get you know a while to get their full strength back full power back on the handed injury So we'll see what that looks like, but he does have some history with Tanner Swanson. Who's the Yankees director of catching? So that could help smooth the transition a little bit for a tough spot to join on the fly that season But yeah, Austin Wells has had a rough rough year. I think he's hitting 148 now. They could certainly use somebody to Either platoon or take over a bulk of the catching duties and try to bring some more pop Real quick before I let you go because I know you got to get to the clubhouse You had briefly mentioned about Giancarlo Stanton not looking like he'd be he'd return pretty soon Is there any details you can give us on where big G is in his return back to the back to the field? Yeah, so it seems like a much slower build up this time after you know, he had the setback Usually got injured late April then he had a setback in in middle of June. He was about to come back He's a couple days away from coming back and he hadn't set back running the bases So it seems like they're kind of slow taking it slower this time. He hasn't you know, Ali says a couple days ago He still hadn't started running. He was kind of relegated to just you know, doing some treadmill work and Thank hitting off and pilot high-velocity Pitching machines, which he had been doing all along for the setback. So it doesn't seem like that's much progress So the answer is no there's there's not a ton of updates which makes you think that he's not really anywhere close to coming back, you know at this point You know, I didn't the all-star break. It almost seems like August would be a best-case scenario for him So, yeah, they obviously got to get him right, you know, same with Judd and Southern got the re-imaging yet a trip So, you know, we're in week five I think I didn't almost in a week six from the four six weeks and they said he would get re-imaging So we'll see if that maybe that happens over the all-star break. They haven't said yet You know hoping to get some kind of an update on him, but that's so for both guys, you know No weeks, if not months away from the tournament. All right Great. Appreciate you hopping on with this man. Have a great night tonight. Yeah. Thanks, Brandon