Your Guide to the Yankees' Awful, Awful Weekend of Clutch Hitting

For decades, mathematicians, statisticians, Sabermetricians, and all manner of splinter factions within the broader nerd community have debated the question of whether clutch hitting is a true skill, one controlled more by the hitter himself than the cruel caprice of the baseball gods. The search for a definitive answer is not going well—we might have one in the next 30 to 120 years—but I can tell you this: over the weekend, I watched the New York Yankees fail in 30 consecutive at-bats with runners in scoring position, and it changed me. Presented with such horror, the rational mind of the modern baseball fan starts to slip back into the darkness of ages past.

How could a pretty good collection of professional hitters—the Yankees rank above the American League average in on-base percentage, OPS+, and batting average—suddenly fail so massively, and all at once? When it began, I would have told you that it was bad luck and the breaks in the game. By the end, I would have believed anything: invisible gremlins, tainted chewing tobacco, the Freemasons, whatever.

Whatever the case, equal measures of history and black magic were at work in the Bronx air this past weekend. New York had already RISPFAIL'ed completely in their final two games against Toronto, but they upped the ante by going 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position on Friday and Saturday against the Mariners. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, they were the first team since the 1993 Orioles to go hitless in at least 12 at-bats with runners in scoring position in each of two straight games. It was a weekend worth recording for posterity, so I kept a diary.

Bottom first: Solo dinger off the bat of Brett Gardner. Good omen? Maybe in normal times.

Bottom second: Lumbering third baseman Chase Headley steals second base with two outs. They're just padding their RISPFAIL stats at this point.

Bottom fourth: Ooh, baby, here we go. Runners on second and third, no outs. Didi Gregorius strikes out swinging. Chase Headley strikes out looking at an outside fastball. Jacoby Ellsbury strikes out looking at the exact same outside fastball.

Bottom fifth: First two batters reach base, then strikeout, flyout, flyout. Sort of an Age of Ultron to the fourth inning—an outwardly similar sequel in which the actions doesn't quite pop the same way as the original. If I had to pick a Yankee equivalent of a CGI robot voiced by James Spader, I guess I'd choose Brian McCann.

Bottom sixth: Two outs, bases loaded, Mark Teixeira at the plate. The Mariners bring in Vidal Nuno, a soft-tossing lefty the Yankees traded away two years ago. Teixeira is now batting righty, by far his stronger side. Seattle is just twisting the knife at this point. Teixeira grounds out to short.

Final: Seattle 7, Yankees 1

Bottom first: New York couldn't break through yesterday against random dude Nate Karns. Now they are facing Felix Hernandez, who treats Yankee Stadium as his own well-appointed summer condo.

Top 5 career ERA at new Yankee Stadium (min 50 IP):
F. Hernandez 1.38
Mariano 1.92
Betances 2.74
Robertson 2.87
Dickey 2.92

— Sweeny Murti (@YankeesWFAN)April 16, 2016

Naturally they get two baserunners in the first. Carlos Beltran struck out to end the inning. It's worth noting that Beltran will go 4-for-5 in this game, with this as the only blemish. Again, we are dealing with powerful unseen forces.

Bottom second: One out, runners on first and second. Infield pop-up. Two outs, bases loaded. Line out. Inning over.

Bottom third: The Yankees score in one of the only non-dinger ways available: Beltran hits a booming double to center, scoring Mark Teixeira from first. Kudos to Teixeira, whose body is mostly one large calcium deposit at this point, for making it all the way around the bases. Beltran gets to third on a wild pitch with one out. Next two hitters fail to drive him in. Personally, I blame Beltran for not retreating back to first base on the wild pitch.

Bottom fourth: 0-for-1 with RISP.

Bottom fifth: 0-for-2 with RISP.

Bottom sixth: 0-for-2 with RISP, but at least the Yankees threw in a nice little wrinkle this time. Austin Romine led off the inning with a double, but got run down after taking off for third base on a grounder back to the pitcher. If this weekend is a marriage, the bottom of the sixth is the moment when the couple grows so bored with their sex life that they start role-playing as a pair of dolphin trainers and are caught screwing in the show tank by night security staff at SeaWorld.

Bottom ninth: With two outs and the team trailing 3-2, Beltran and Starlin Castro hit back-to-back singles. The team is just showing off by this point.

— Sweeny Murti (@YankeesWFAN)April 16, 2016

Final score: Mariners 3, Yankees 2

Bottom first: 0-for-2 with RISP. Broadcasters keep talking about the matchup of two Japanese pitchers. Eight years ago, I found a sweet-ass bootleg DVD box set of Akira Kurosawa films in a shop in Inner Mongolia. I have no idea where I put it. I should probably check the basement instead of watching this game.

Bottom second: Yankees take a 2-1 lead on a two-run bomb from Alex Rodriguez. Can you guess which base the runner was standing on at the time?

Bottom third: Jacoby Ellsbury steals second, moves to third on the throw. Basically he's spitting in the eye of fate. But then something shocking happens. Put Brett Gardner's shot in the scorebook as a ground-rule double and an RBI. Could centerfielder Leonys Martin have made that catch if he was playing deeper, or didn't alligator-arm it at the last moment? Who cares anymore?

Bottom fifth: Score tied. First and third, one out. The Yankees need a miracle. They get it.

Sorry. That sounded too dramatic. What I mean is that the Yankees take the lead on a wild pitch. Sorry.

Bottom sixth: Leadoff double followed by three straight outs. Ho-hum.

Bottom eighth: Nine of the last 10 Yankees are retired in order. They're just trying to get this thing over with. They've gone 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position, a job well done.

Final score: Yankees 4, Mariners 3

And that was that. Three games, 35 at-bats with runners in scoring position, one hit. It was dramatic and farcical and terrifying to behold. Forget trying to understand it. The game is to survive it.