It’s time for an Update from Yankee Land.  After their hot start, the Yankees have come down to earth a bit.  Now tied  for first place in the loss column (the only column that matters) with Baltimore for the AL East, the Yankees have some issues that need to be solved.  Lets look at what’s been going well for the Bronx Bombers and what needs to get better if they want to stay atop the standings. 

Before we get into the play on the field, I have to talk about the retiring of the voice of the Yankees, John Sterling.  I grew up watching the Yankees on WPIX, but by the 90s, I no longer had PIX in my cable.  Luckily, I could get the Yankee games on the radio.  Sterling and Michael Kay were the best.  I loved listening to them so much that I would bring my boom box outside and listen to the entire games while shooting hoops in my driveway.  If I really had nothing to do I would get into my car and drive around Rhode Island for 3 plus hours just so I could listen to the game.   It always came in better outside my house.  I can still remember listening to Doc Gooden’s no hitter while sitting in the back corner of my house where I got the best reception.  By the end I was sitting in the dark as I couldn’t dare get up and turn on a light and risk jinxing the no-no.  I have so many memories listening to John Sterling.  Hell, even one that doesn’t have to do with baseball.  As a Celtics fan, I’ve listened to John call Larry Bird’s 60 point game against the Hawks countless times.  I can hear his “Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Laaarry Biiird” call in my head as easily as I can hear any of his home run calls or his “Yankees win, theeeeeee Yankeeeeeees win”.  And as anyone who has ever watched a baseball game with me, be it MLB, little league or a video game can attest, when ever someone hits a homer, I immediately and instinctively break into “It is high, it is far, it. Is. GONE!”  Sterling was the best.  He will be missed.  Hopefully the Yankees will find a way to immortalize him at the stadium.  And hopefully they do it while he’s still around to appreciate it. 

With my little tribute out of the way, lets talk about the team Sterling will get to watch on that 85 inch TV the Yankees gave him.  When I wrote my season preview for the Yankees I was really excited for them to have a big season.  It was with good reason.  In Spring training, and the beginning of the season for that matter,  we saw everything we wanted to see coming into the season.  The guys we were hoping would hit, hit.  The pitching staff looked good.  Aside from Cole getting injured, everything was going pretty much best case scinario.  Well, that was then.  Now, not so much.  It’s not all bad.  Here is where we are at.

Lets start with the good.  The pitching has been as good as they could have asked for.  The Yankees are 4th in the league in runs against. Each starter has been good.  Strowman has pitched as he did pre-injury last season and has been a great addition to the staff.  Rodon seems to have figured things out and is now using more than just his fastball and slider to get guys out.  He has now thrown to both catchers and has pitched well to both of them.  Cortez and Schmidt have pitched as you would expect them to.  Luis Gil has been almost as good as he was in the spring.  The young fireballer has shown an ability to be a starter in the Majors and has shown the potential to be a top of the rotation guy.  The one thing holding him back is that every now and then his control issues rear their ugly heads.  Not only do the walks (17 in 19 innings) put him in more stressful situations and lead to runs but they run up his pitch count.  Add in all the strike outs, 29, and he hasn’t been able to go deep into games.  If he can be more consistent, he can be a real weapon for them. 

The Bullpen has been Ok but not great. It’s tough because the teams lack of offense means that the bullpen is under pressure to not give up any runs. That’s not realistic. Losing Loaisiga hurts but at this point is expected. Holmes has been good as the closer. I still have confidence in the team to figure the pen out. Hopefully it’s just taking a few weeks to figure out everyone’s roles.

The problem on the Yankees so far this season should sound awfully familiar.  They can’t hit.  They are currently 14th in the Majors in runs scored. They are 21st in batting average and slugging. And they can’t stop hitting into double plays. Cashman tried to solve this issue by acquiring Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo.  Well, for the last two weeks or so, the only two guys on the team who are hitting are…you guessed it, Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo.  Soto has been unreal.  Better than advertised.  He is hitting a ton and he is getting huge hits.  He works every count and makes the picture work every plate appearance.  And he’s a lot better outfielder than I was led to believe.  I thought Grisham was going to be a late inning defensive replacement for him every close game.  Grisham is a better fielder but there is no reason to risk taking Soto’s bat out of the line up.  

Verdugo has really turned it on of late.  He actually has hit well all season, he just started out with a lot of bad luck.  He hit a ton of ball hard but right at guys and had a bunch of guys make some really nice defensive plays against him.  Now the balls are falling in and he is starting to put up numbers.  He has been batting 7th and the Yankees really need to move him up the line up.  With the way things are going he should bat behind Judge instead of Rizzo.  Put him up there where he can drive in some runs and be protection for the big bats.  

(I am watching the Yankees as I am writing this so of course Soto miss played a ball in right and Rizzo hit a two run homer. Just how things work in my world)  

Speaking of big bats, lets talk about the biggest bat.  Or at least what is supposed to be the biggest bat, Aaron Judge.  There is no nice way of saying this, Judge has been awful so far.  He is hitting .180 with 3 homers and 11 RBIs.  I don’t know if it’s his toe or if he’s pressing because Soto is here or if it’s because he missed some spring training time or what but he has not been remotely good.  They need him to be good.  If it is his toe, they could be in trouble because I don’t know how that gets better during the season.  But I don’t think it’s that.  He has had two problems so far.  One. He is back to not being able to lay off sliders down and away.  This used to be a problem for him but the last two seasons he had become very good at spitting on those pitches.  I don’t know why he’s back to hacking away at them.  He needs to get his eye back.  The other problem is that when he gets a good pitch to hit, he is just missing them and fouling them off.  Neither of these seem to be physical issues.  Hopefully he just needs time to get his swing and timing down.  

Now me, I would be proactive with it and try changing the line up to get him going.  If they switch him and Soto, maybe he will get more pitches to hit and have more chances to get it right.  Soto is second in the league in walks, 1 behind the league leaders, so clearly teams are still willing to pitch cautiously to him, if not around him, even with Judge behind him.  Judge is only 2 walks behind him so Having Soto on base in front of him isn’t keeping pitchers from be cautious with him either. If batting Judge behind Soto isn’t helping either of them, than why not try it the other way?  Back in ’61, when Rodger Marris got off to a slow start, Ralph Houk switched him and Mantle in the lineup to try and get Marris going.  I’m gonna say it worked.  If you knew me through the Celtics’ Doc Rivers era, you know I hate coaches/mangers who don’t try things when it’s going bad.  Try to find something that works. With Judge going so bad and the team’s offense struggling, they need to try something to jump start it.  

Moving on, Gleyber Torres is off to arguably a worst start than Judge.  The Yankees two best hitters from a season ago are their two worst hitters this season.  Torres hit better and better as the season went on last year so this could just be a slow start.  However, there is something else to consider.  This is Gleyber’s walk year.  He will be a free agent after the season and well, the Yankees haven’t exactly made him seem like a priority.  Most guys have big years in their walk years as they see the pot of gold at the end of the season.  Some guys go the other way.  They try to hard to have huge years and earn a big contract and end up having poor seasons.  Is this the case with Gleyber?  He’s always at his best when he is going to the opposite field and not trying to yank everything out of the park.  Is he trying to put up big home run numbers so he can get a bigger contract?  Is he just feeling the pressure of not knowing where his future lies?  If so, hopefully he will realize that his best option is to just relax and play his game and be the versatile hitter he excels at being.  

The other big bat in the line up, Giancarlo Stanton, looks a lot better this season than last.  Of course, I’m not sure he could have looked worse.  He is moving a lot better which is the big thing.  He is no longer an issue on the base paths.  He is able to leg out doubles, score from second on a hit, and even go first to third.  All things he most definitely could not do last season.  His hitting has been OK.  He is only hitting .233 but he has 5 round trippers, 11RBIs, and a couple if doubles.  Not awful.  He is hitting .250 against lefties, adding credence to my platoon idea, but all of his power has come against righties.  So who knows.  I still wouldn’t bat him as high in the order as they do but he is being as productive as we can hope for at this point.  

Volpe has had the definition of an up and down season so far. The gold glover started out the season red hot hitting over .400 the first couple of weeks. Since then, not so much. A regression was inevitable as he’s not one of the greatest hitters of all time. However, he’s taking this regression thing a bit too far. With the hot start they moved him to the lead off spot. The first couple of games went well but after that he has been awful. He has hit .196 over the last 15 days. The worst part is, like last season, he is back to striking out a lot. Hopefully hitting lead off isn’t in his head. He did great to start but I don’t know if once he started to slump he has been putting too much pressure on himself. It will be interesting to see how long they stick with him leading off. DJ LeMehieu was due back soon, which would have given them an easy out to move him down without it looking like he failed. Of course DJ had a set back and now who knows when he will make his return to the lineup

As you can see, the Yankees have a hitting problem yet again.  Unlike years in the past, there is a ton of talent in this lineup and they should be able to right the ship.  Hopefully the team will make some adjustments to the batting order to try and speed up the turn around.