The Dog Days of summer in the Northern Hemisphere don't officially begin until the rising of Sirius, the "dog star." This is usually mid-to-late July, and we can thank the Greeks for the canid construction. "On summer nights, star of stars, Orion's Dog they call it," Homer recited in the Iliad, "brightest of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity." The Dog Days of the baseball season—those weeks of malaise and joylessness and what feels like the 12th Tigers-Royals series of the year—traditionally kick off after the all-star break, when teams and fans start to really feel the weight of 162 games. The Dog Days for the New York Yankees come a little earlier. June, usually. You can tell because that's when they let Sonny Gray flirt with a no-hitter.
Gray threw seven-and-a-third hitless on Sunday night, though Aroldis Chapman would blow the save, forcing the Red Sox to score three in the 10th for the walk-off.
It capped a four-game sweep for the Sox in Boston, which moves them within 12.5 games of the Yankees in the AL East. As you might have guessed from the size of that division lead, and the inclusion of the proper noun "Sonny Gray," this may be among the highlights for the Red Sox this season. Which, by transitive property, makes it a low point—so far—for the Yankees. Or it would be, if this didn't happen basically every year.
Recent iterations of the Yankees don't deal well with the month of June. They're 12-12 this month, with one more to play, so they'll finish this June either one game below .500—like June 2025 and June 2023—or one game above it, like June 2024.
For whatever reason, they especially hate June in Boston. Sunday's 7.2-inning hitless start followed Saturday's 4.2-inning hitless start, which itself came on the heels of Friday's 5.1-inning hitless start. It's the first time since 1914 they recorded three or fewer hits in three straight games, but that's somehow par for the course in Beantown. The Yankees have a baffling 1-18 record in their last 19 June games at Fenway Park.
It's not the end of the world for the Yankees. They're still just one game out of first, mostly because the entire American League is dogshit. They're likely to get back Giancarlo Stanton, Trent Grisham, Ryan McMahon, and Max Fried from the IL in July (the returns of Aaron Judge, Luis Gil, and Clarke Schmidt are iffier). But, more than anything else: it's a long season and a lot of stuff happens.
This is the point manager Aaron Boone was trying to express, inelegantly, after this weekend's sweep. Boone was asked how to stop one very rough weekend from snowballing into a real-deal slump.
"That’s what we do, baby," Boone said. "You gotta love this stuff. You gotta eat this stuff up. It’s a sickness.
"That’s what the grind is,” he continued. “We got a really good freakin' team. We played crappy on this trip, kinda. Feels bad. Kinda pissed off, right? But it’s what we do. It’s what you signed up for."
As long as they're not dogging it.
