Why Yankees’ Didi Gregorius might be coming out of horrific slump

Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he sees positives for shortstop Didi Gregorius, who has been awful in May after a spectacular April.

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WASHINGTON — Remember how good Didi Gregorius was in April?

If that was like a dream, May has been his nightmare.

Still, Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he believes Gregorius hasn’t been as bad as the numbers have shown and that he’s not far from busting out.

“I think if you look back at a lot of our games of late, there’s been two or three times in a game where he’s really stung the ball,” Boone said before the Yankees and Nationals were rained out for the second straight day at Nationals Park on Wednesday.

He added, “While I know he’s going through a tough stretch right now, I certainly don’t believe it’s as bad as the not-getting-hits because I do feel like there’s been a fair amount of good contact in there.”

Gregorius, meanwhile, was upbeat.

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“I’m still hitting the ball hard,” Gregorius said. “Whatever I do, whether I’m hitting the ball hard or not hitting the ball hard, it’s at somebody. There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m trying to make good contact out there, and the results are not always going to be there.”

The shortstop was hitting .333 with 10 homers, 30 RBI and a 1.130 OPS through 31 games after May 3. He was named April’s American League Player of the Month.

Since then? Woof.

He’s got just one hit in 41 plate appearances over nine games. That included an 0-for-30 stretch, almost all while hitting out of the Yankees’ No. 3 spot. It was the Yankees’ longest span without a hit since Russel Martin did it in 2012.

Gregorius last got a hit off Oakland’s Andrew Triggs on Saturday to break the hitless skid. Then he went right back into a funk.

Boone was asked how he thinks the 28-year-old is handling the struggles.

“Great,” Boone said. “Didi, as I’ve talked about this whole year, he’s such a from a makeup standpoint, he’s great. He loves to play. He’s tough. He’s prepared. I think he deals with all that baseball throws at you and baseball’s going to throw bumps in the road when you’re in the middle of being a great player. That’s the nature of being a ball player, you’re going to have these occasional bumps in the road over the course of a season. I think he’s handled it great.”

Brendan Kuty may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanKutyNJ. Find NJ.com Yankees on Facebook.