Rizzo, Yanks hit ‘low point,’ fall to 1-4 since break
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Aaron Judge changed into his street clothes and briefly sat on a folding chair in front of his locker on Tuesday night, more than four hours removed from the only baseball activities his injured toe will allow. It was another loss absorbed within another somber, muted New York Yankees clubhouse, where the only sounds were those of teammates trying to publicly explain why they still can’t figure out how to win without their best player.
“The mood’s down, for sure,” Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo said after a 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Angels, his team’s third in a row and fifth in the last six games. “I think we all expect — we definitely all expect — better of ourselves, individually and as a team. And it’s OK to be down right now. It’s a close group. This is a low point. We’ve been battling, but this is part of it.”
The Yankees began their second half by dropping two of three to a Colorado Rockies team that was on pace to lose 100 games for the first time in franchise history, then flew from Denver to Orange County, California, to face an Angels team that had lost 11 of its previous 13 games and lost to them on back-to-back nights. The Yankees were blanked by Chase Anderson and his 6.89 ERA on Sunday, then managed three runs in a combined 13 innings against Griffin Canning and Patrick Sandoval, two members of an Angels rotation that had struggled mightily throughout July.
Since Judge sprained his right big toe on the concrete portion of the right-field fence at Dodger Stadium on June 3, the Yankees’ offense has produced the majors’ third-lowest OPS (.658) and third-fewest runs per game (3.78). On Monday night, in the midst of suffering consecutive walk-off losses in extra innings for the first time in 22 years, they struck out 17 times and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. Twenty-four hours later, they produced one hit through the first seven innings.
The Yankees were 10 games above .500 when Judge went down and have gone 15-21 ever since.
“That’s what the story is,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “We can correct it. We have the players to do it. We have the players with track record to do it. I understand that’s the story, and it’s fair for this year. We’ve been through stretches in ’19 when we were down Judge and [Giancarlo Stanton] and kept on banging. Those guys in that clubhouse are very capable. It’s coincided, obviously, with the game’s best player out, so that’s the story. But we’re capable. Still. We got to find it. It’s as simple as that. And I know that’s a broken record, I know it’s a boring answer – we got to find it.”
At 50-46, the Yankees still possess a better record than every team in the American League Central. But they’re in last place in their own division, the AL East, deeper into a season than they have been since 1990, a year that ended with 95 losses.
Rizzo, Stanton, D.J. LeMahieu and Josh Donaldson, the latter of whom is out indefinitely with a significant calf strain, have combined for 14 All-Star appearances but have slashed just .220/.298/.394 this season, producing a .692 OPS that sits 39 points below the league average. It’s why Boone scoffed when asked if it’s time to accept the possibility that this is simply what this time is.
“No,” he said. “No, no. There’s no quit in it. We got to fight. We got really good players in there, and a lot of guys who are going through a tough, tough stretch. For some probably as tough a stretch as they’ve been in their career. You don’t take your ball and go home. You stick your nose in there and you grind it out. And you compete your ass off. We’re doing that, they’re doing that. They’re not leaving any stone unturned. It’s not from a lack of work and focus and conversations.”
The Yankees have already lost four series this month, also dropping ones to the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs, two National League Central teams that will part with veteran players before the Aug. 1 trade deadline. The Yankees, a week removed from hiring Sean Casey as their new hitting coach, consider themselves buyers before the deadline but don’t have the look of a team that is only a piece or two away from championship contention.
They’re banking on an imminent return from Judge, who has been taking batting practice and doing light defensive work on the field before games. And the returns of starting pitcher Nestor Cortes and relief pitcher Jonathan Loaisiga shortly thereafter.
But the active players have to figure it out themselves.
“This is part of the journey,” Rizzo said, his team nine games out of first place but only 2 1/2 games back of the final wild-card spot. “This is the story of the 2023 season, and this is what we’re dealt with, these are the cards in front of us, and we just got to keep playing.”
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Mark Schlabach
Kentucky quarterback Zach Calzada apologized Friday for sending a video to someone on social media in which he boasted about the amount of NIL money he has received from the Wildcats this season.
The video, which was posted to X by a different person, showed Calzada counting a large stack of $100 bills.
Calzada, who turns 25 on Saturday, said he sent the video to someone who had apparently criticized his play this season.
In the video, Calzada tells the fan, “Hey, what you need to do, Garrett, is your ass needs to stop hatin’ and go get you some money. But since you ain’t got nothing, you go ahead and you can count mine.”
“Let’s count,” Calzada said, as he fanned the $100 bills.
“Don’t lose count, Garrett,” Calzada continued. “Straight hundreds.”
A Kentucky spokesman told the Lexington Herald-Leader on Friday, “Zach has taken responsibility for his actions. He has done the right thing and apologized. Now, it’s time to move forward.”
Calzada, who is playing his seventh season of college football, started the first two games for the Wildcats in 2025. He was ineffective, completing 47.2% of his attempts for 234 yards with no touchdowns and one interception.
Calzada injured his throwing shoulder in the fourth quarter of a 30-23 loss to Ole Miss on Sept. 6.
Freshman Cutter Boley took over and has started the past six games, throwing for 1,376 yards with 10 touchdowns and 7 interceptions.
Calzada, from Buford, Georgia, started his career at Texas A&M in 2019. His best season came in 2021, when he replaced injured Haynes King and went 6-4 as the starter. He completed 21 of 31 passes for 285 yards with 3 touchdowns and 1 interception in the Aggies’ 41-38 upset of then-No. 1 Alabama on Oct. 9, 2021.
Calzada transferred to Auburn in 2022 but never played in a game after undergoing surgery on his non-throwing shoulder.
He spent the past two seasons at FCS program Incarnate Word, where he was named the Southland Conference Newcomer of the Year in 2024 and Player of the Year last season, when he threw for 3,744 yards with 35 touchdowns and 9 interceptions.
The Wildcats (3-5, 1-5 SEC) host Florida (3-5, 2-3 SEC) on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network).
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the College Football Playoff board of managers, told ESPN’s Paul Finebaum on Friday that the SEC would prefer to “not have automatic bids” in future iterations of the playoff.
Keenum’s comments came just weeks before the CFP’s Dec. 1 deadline to determine whether there will be a format change for 2026 and beyond.
“I’m not a big fan of automatic qualifiers,” Keenum said on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” which was live from Mississippi State ahead of Saturday’s game against Georgia. “I think the best teams ought to play in our nation’s national tournament to determine who our national champion in college football is going to be and not have automatic bids. That’s the position of the Southeastern Conference — presidents and chancellors, our commissioner, and probably most of the conferences that are part of the CFP.”
If the playoff is going to expand beyond 12 teams, the Big Ten and SEC will have to agree on the format because they were granted the bulk of control over it during the previous contract negotiation. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey haven’t reached consensus on a model. Following SEC spring meetings in May, a 16-team model that would feature the top five conference champions and 11-at-large teams gained support from every FBS conference except the Big Ten, which has been steadfast in its support of automatic qualifiers.
In August, ESPN reported the Big Ten’s interest in an expanded field that could include 24 or 28 teams and would eliminate conference championship games. That model could include seven guaranteed spots for both the Big Ten and SEC; five each for the ACC and Big 12; two bids for leagues outside the Power 4; and two at-large teams.
Multiple sources within the CFP have been skeptical for months that Sankey and Petitti would agree on a format — which means the most likely outcome would be for the current, 12-team format to remain in place for at least another season.
“We’re still negotiating,” Keenum told Finebaum. “We have to make a decision before the end of this month if we’re going to expand to 16 next year. … I’ll be honest, I’m not very optimistic that we’ll get to that, but we’ll keep working on it.”
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