NEW SEASON BUT SAME OLD PROBLEM

Well....that sucked.

The first game of the season felt great, but then the second and third was just a bad reminder that this may be a new season but the Yankees still have one of the same problems. It can still be fixed but wow, we HAVE to hit better than this.

Not that I should be trying to sugarcoat the last two games but hey....it could be worse, right? Let's be glad that we aren't the Boston Red Sox right now. J.A. Happ had a bad start but that's just a continuance of what we saw in Spring. It's not a surprise and I have faith he will work it out. The Red Sox have their own issues with their 1-3 record and their pitching staff is tied for the worst start in a decade. Ironic how the top two teams in the AL East are at the bottom right now.

So yes Happ had a bad start last night, it was ugly but the Yankees were playing the Orioles for crying out loud! They lost 115 games last season and could do so again. They have no star power and are basically a Triple-A team. The Yankees should not be losing series to the Orioles. Sure, it's only April now but those games could mean something later. The Yankees offense should have stepped up and got the job done.

The Yankees have needed to improve their situational hitting for a long time now. All winter and spring long we kept hearing about how the Yankees were going to do better with runners in scoring position and strike out less. We didn't see that the last two games. Saturday and Sunday the Yankees left the tying runs on base to end the game and left 25 runners on base. The Yankees were 5-for-21 with runners in scoring position and that just isn't going to get the job done.

We can't afford games where Aaron Judge strikes out four times. We need Giancarlo Stanton to do more than just walk three times but get no hits. Speaking of no hits, Greg Bird can't have a deep regression. Spring Training may be in the past but Luke Voit is still around and on the roster. His job isn't safe yet.

The Yankees have a great lineup, and an improved one also. Does losing the first series to Orioles sting? Yeah, a lot but the Yankees need to look past it and look ahead to the Detroit Tigers today. We need to make the most of all of these April games considering we have an easier schedule.

Let's hope the Yankees learned from their situational hitting woes this weekend and don't repeat it. It's a new series, and a new opportunity to climb out from the bottom. We ARE better than this. It's not time to panic yet, but we need to quickly fix the issues.

We got this....let's go Yankees!

--Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @nyprincessj