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Anthony Rizzo knows how slumps — and, really, the marathon of an MLB season — work.
When Rizzo finds a groove, like the Yankees first baseman did for the first 55 games of 2023, he feels like he’ll never get out again.
But when a slump arrives — and it certainly has, amid a 1-for-27 stretch the past seven games that dipped his average to .273, including Friday night’s 3-2 loss to the Red Sox — Rizzo said it can feel as if that elusive hit will never materialize.
He went 0-for-4 against Boston’s Garrett Whitlock and Chris Martin, but both Rizzo and manager Aaron Boone insisted that his neck injury, which caused him to miss the Mariners series, has been fine physically.
Rizzo added that “it’s just part of the game.”
“It’s a six-, seven-game stretch that sucks, but six or seven games, 10 games, three weeks, isn’t going to define your season,” Rizzo said. “Just got to keep going.”
Rizzo’s slump has come at one of the worst possible stretches for the Yankees, too.
With Aaron Judge sidelined for an undetermined amount of time with a right big toe sprain, the Yankees needed their most consistent hitter from the season’s first three months to help replace his production.
But Rizzo hasn’t recorded a hit in the five games without Judge.
Rizzo hit .304 until the start of the Seattle series, which he missed following an awkward collision with the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. on a pickoff tag and ensuing neck stiffness.
He recorded the lone hit of the slump in his second game back against the Dodgers.
“With Judge in the lineup, without him in the lineup, you always want to play well,” Rizzo said. “Obviously, when he’s not, it’s on all of us to pick it up, but this is baseball. This is part of it. You go through it, and it’s what makes it so sweet when you have success.”
Against Whitlock on Friday, Rizzo’s first two at-bats occurred with runners on base, and both ended without any movement. DJ LeMahieu singled to lead off the first inning, but Rizzo struck out.
Then, in the third, LeMahieu singled again and advanced to second when Josh Donaldson grounded out, but Rizzo’s lineout — that had a 100.5 mph exit velocity — was collected by Adam Duvall.
That out, at least, marked progress, as its exit velocity marked Rizzo’s second-hardest ball in play since the slump began — trailing a June 2 groundout that Statcast tracked at 104.0 mph.
Boone also thought that Rizzo’s groundout in the sixth, where shortstop Kiké Hernandez was positioned close to the base, was “a rocket.”
But in pivotal spots in a close game, with Judge, their major source of power, sidelined, the Yankees need Rizzo to rediscover his early season version. That — or anything close to it — didn’t happen again.
“He’s been scuffling a little bit, obviously,” Boone said. “Ebb and flow of the season, but I think physically he’s good.”
