The New York Yankees may be trending towards the inevitable with their struggling veteran first baseman Anthony Rizzo.
Rizzo was out of the lineup for Sunday’s series finale against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Notably, Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters before the game that he was considering sitting Rizzo for Monday’s game against the Kansas City Royals as well.
“I might give him [Monday off] too,” said Boone of Rizzo, according to Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. “We’ll see. We’ll get through [Sunday], and he and I will get together to come up with a plan.
“There’s no question over the last two, three weeks especially, it’s been a little bit of a struggle [for him],” Boone added. “When you’re going through it and making little adjustments, they don’t always take right away … It’s sometimes a process.”
While a one-game absence could conceivably be construed as a maintenance day off, a multiple-game absence would fall more so under the category of a true benching for Rizzo. It might be the appropriate move too at this point with the 34-year-old former All-Star. It has been a brutal season for Rizzo, who is batting .224 with a .623 OPS through 64 games. That includes a horrendous 1-for-29 in the month of June thus far.
Rizzo also struggled mightily last year for the Yankees, but that was largely due to a troubling concussion issue that he was playing through at the time. He appears to be healthy this time around but still cannot find the mark at the plate. That could lead the Yankees to turn to DJ LeMahieu as their everyday first baseman with Oswaldo Cabrera moving into a more regular role from here as well.
