It has been another fortnight so it’s time to head back down to Yankee Land and see what’s going on with the Bronx Bombers. Well, it hasn’t been good. The free fall continues for the Yanks and things don’t look like they are turning around. If there was ever a team that needed an All-Star break it is this one. Well, let’s get into it.
First let’s start with some good news as there isn’t much of it. Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and Clay Holmes have made the All-Star team. Also, Spencer Jones and Brock Selvidge were named to the Futures game. Congratulations to them all. Hopefully none of them get hurt playing in the games. Luis Gil not making the team was a little surprising. Sure, he had 3 bad starts in a row there but he was pretty dominate the rest of the first half, and had a great bounce back game last night against the Sox. My guess is if they need to replace any pitchers on the AL roster, Gil will get a call.
Gil’s outing was one of the few highlights over the last two weeks for the Yankees. Hopefully he is over what ever caused those three bad outings and he will be back to his usual self. If he does get named to the All-Star team, I hope he doesn’t pitch. His arm could use a good week off. With their All-Star break being 4 days, they can line up their rotation any way they want coming out of it. Gil could go another 4 days before he takes the mound as the 5th starter giving him a nice 9-day break between starts. His arm, coming off of Tommy John, could probably use a nice break.
The other good thing that has unfolded since last time is the emergence of Ben Rice. Rice has continued to rake in his inaugural run in the Majors. While still struggling in his few at bats against lefties (2 hits in 15 Abs), he has continued to hit against righties to a .325 average. And now the power has started to show up. Rice announced his presence with authority in a three-homer game against the Sox and now has 4 longs balls and 3 doubles on the season (only 18 games) to go with a .273 average and 12 RBIs. Aside from winning a championship, there isn’t anything in sports as much fun as watching a young guy come up through your system and produce when he gets his chance. With the way Rice is hitting, if he keeps it up, there is no way they can put Anthony Rizzo back at first base when he is healthy. At this point in time, Rice is just better. They both hit lefty so they can’t even really platoon them. Rizzo is on the 60-day IL so he has at least 38 more days before he can come back. That gives Rice 38 more days to keep proving he is the better option. Will he keep it up? I don’t know. Maybe the league will get a book on him and start pitching to his weaknesses more. The Yankees are scheduled to only face 1 lefty starter in their last 6 games until the All-Star break so hopefully Rice can keep hitting and go into the break with a ton of confidence.
Austin Wells has also been a bit of a bright spot lately. In the last 15 days he is hitting .269 with a .945 slug with 2 homers, 6 RBIs, a double and 6 walks to only 5 strikeouts. For the Yankees that counts as being on fire. With the way the Yankees hitting has been pretty much all season, Wells needs to play every day. If there are days they want to catch Travino, which after the debacle last week in Boston shouldn’t be too often, they should DH Wells. They really can’t afford to take his bat out of the line up right now. And with the more at bats he is getting, the closer he is to becoming the hitter we saw at the end of last season and in spring training. He has only had 21 ABs against lefties but he is hitting .286 against them. Maybe just leave him in and see how he does. They have very few guys hitting right now, taking one of them out of the line up is just a bad idea.
Speaking of DHs, the Yankees are really missing theirs. In games in which Giancarlo Stanton plays the Yankees are 46-23. In games without him, 9-14. They are 3-10 since he was injured. As expected, losing him has been devastating. Also as expected, the problem is they have no one on the roster to replace him. They have gone with Trent Grisham as the main replacement and well, he has actually been pretty good. Since Stanton has been out Grisham is hitting .273. He just doesn’t have the run production that Stanton brings to the table. He has but 1 home run and 5 RBIs in that time. He is also not someone you want up in a big situation.
But here is the real problem with Grisham as Stanton’s replacement. They are not DHing him, they are playing him in center and DHing Aaron Judge. This needs to stop immediately. I understand the thinking. Grisham’s best attribute is his fielding. He is an excellent centerfielder and a usually poor hitter so if you are going to put in him the line up you want to play hm in the field so you ae getting the most out of him. That makes sense. The problem is that as great of a hitter as Aaron Judge is, he sucks as a DH. On the season he has 74 ABs as a DH and is hitting .230 with 29 Ks and a .808 OPS. In his 221 ABs as a centerfielder, he is hitting .330 with 64 Ks and a 1.197 OPS. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the problem here. (for the record, he has 12 ABs as a left fielder hitting .083 and 18 ABs in right hitting .500) As I said, I understand the thought process behind playing Grisham in the field but I think it’s pretty obvious that getting the most out of Aaron Judge is much, much more important than getting the most out of Trent Grisham. I cannot stress enough how important it is that the Yankees put their captain back in the field. And if you are wondering, Soto hates DHing as well. That’s why they have kept the lesser outfielder in the field and tried DHing Judge.
The reason Judge is such an important hitter is that so many guys are just not getting it done in the batter’s box. Volpe has completely gone into the tank. After hitting .293 in May, he hit .220 in June and is hitting a disgusting .120 in July. His strike outs have increased every month and his power has all but disappeared. I really don’t know what happened here. Maybe after 2 months of seeing his new approach at the plate teams have figured him out? My guess is that he keeps putting more and more pressure on himself as the slump gets longer and longer and it’s just making things worse. I would love to know what goes on in his head during an at bat as sometimes his pitch selection can be terrible. Maybe he is out thinking himself out there. I think a guy like him, especially the contact guy he tried to become this season, should be a “see the ball, hit the ball” type of guy, like Boggs and Gwynn, and not trying to guess the pitch. That is more for a guy who is trying to hit home runs. I would love for the Yankees to try and get Derek Jeter to talk to him about this approach, which he used, if he hasn’t already.
Verdugo, who was a big factor in the Yankees’ hot start, may be starting to turn things around after a terrible June. In the 24 Abs he has had in July he is hitting .250 with 2 doubles and a home run. He hadn’t hit a home run in 17 games before that one and he has only 4 doubles in that time. Now, the Yankees went a ridiculous stretch where they faced a slew of lefty starters so that may have been a factor in Verdugo’s recent struggles but hopefully this little surge is him coming out of it. The Yanks really need him to be the guy behind Soto and Judge that can take advantage of their high on base percentages and make teams pay for pitching around them. The combination of him and Stanton was doing a great job of that when they were wining. Now Stanton is out so there is more pressure on Verdugo to come through.
At some point the Yankees as an organization has to reach the conclusion that DJ LeMahieu is just done. He is just no longer a major league hitter. The man is 35 years old and the injuries have derailed his career. He was a hell of a hitter when he first came over. I still insist he should have been the 2019 AL MVP. But sadly, it’s been all down hill since then. He hit .367 in 50 games the following year but then his batting averaged dropped off almost 100 points to .268 the following season. Then down to .261, then .243 and this season he is batting an embarrassing .194. And it’s not like he has any power. Never really has and this year his is yet to hit a home run. He is still a very good fielder but he just can’t hit anymore. They have to move on from him. They don’t really have a replacement right now but as guys get healthy or if they make any moves between now and the trade deadline, he is someone they need to get out of the line up and, even better, off the roster. He is signed for 2 more years at 15 mil per. They really need to get him off the payroll.
The pitching hasn’t been any better than the hitting. I talked about Gil already. Nester has been dominating at home but can’t pitch at all on the road. It’s to the point where the Yankees should start trying to hold him out of road games and try to pitch him as much as possible at home. Strowman has been about average. Rodon is back to sucking (for the love of Yogi Berra, please stop throwing sliders middle middle!) and Cole has been up and down while trying to get into mid-season form. The Bullpen has been hit or miss as well. They just never know what they are going to get when they make a pitching change. Weaver has been pretty consistently good. Holmes is Holmes. Ferguson has been consistently awful. And the rest are really a coinflip every game. Early in the season the pitching staff was keeping the team in games and allowing them time to make a come back as they did in the late innings quite a bit. Now the Yankees are usually starting games from behind and the Pen is coming in and torching any chance of a comeback. Then there are the days like yesterday against the Sox where they get good pitching but get shut out. To start the season everything was going right for the Yankees. Now everything is going wrong.
To that end, I am starting to really think it might be time for the Yankees to move on from Aaron Boone. Boone seems like a nice guy and I absolutely love the way he passionately defends his players and has no qualms about getting thrown out in the process. The problem is, at this point, I think that’s the only thing I like about his managing. Look, this isn’t his fault. It’s not his fault guys stopped hitting. It’s not his fault the pitching staff has fallen apart. He did not put this roster together. It’s not his fault they have had so many injuries (I’ll get back to this in a little bit). Is he the problem? Not nearly as much as these other factors. The issue is that he isn’t the solution. He’s not helping.
I already talked about DHing Judge. His pitching changes can be baffling at times. Like, how on earth do you let Cole pitch to his nemesis Devers, give up a home run, and then immediately take him out? If he’s at the end of his outing then take him out before Devers. What does one less batter mean? It’s just baffling. Speaking of Devers, quick aside…I absolutely hate the Yankees decision to not only pitch to him but also not put a high hard one under his chin and make him uncomfortable at the plate. This is the David Ortiz situation all over again. And that could not have turned out worse. I just don’t get it. Look at the third home run he hit this last series. You can’t blame the pitcher; the pitch was so far outside it would have hit a right-handed batter. But Devers, in a great piece of hitting, just calmly reached out and destroyed the ball into the right center field seats. That is something you can only do when you are completely comfortable in the box. Just totally relaxed. It’s like batting practice for him. They have to do something to change this or just put up the four fingers every time he steps to the plate.
OK, now that I got that off my chest. I don’t know how many of these decisions are Boone’s or the organization’s but they leave a lot to be desired. If they are coming from up above then firing Boone won’t change much. However, I think it might be time for a change as a way to shake things up. Now, you really don’t want to see someone lose their job just to “shake things up” but sadly I think we are at that point. They have to do something. And as I said, it’s not like Boone is getting the most out of the team or is the one thing holding it all together. There is merit to the idea of firing him. And it is not just a one season thing. The two seasons before this saw the same pattern of the Yankees starting off great and then their season going into a tail spin. 2022 after a 61-23 start they finished 38-40. Last season they started 36-25 and then fell off and missed the playoffs. Now, Judge’s injury had a lot to do with last season but it does go to show you that Boone isn’t helping when things go bad. And this season things are going very bad. When a team isn’t stacked like the Dodgers or the Braves, the little decisions the manger makes have a big impact on the outcome of games. Boone’s decision making hasn’t been good enough to save the team from falling apart. It feels like it is time for a new voice in the club house. Whose voice should that be? I have no idea. They could do the funniest thing and rehire Joe Girardi. I don’t know. But they have to do something to shake up the team and change the vibe in the club house.
Another way they could do that is by bringing up another youngster or two to replace struggling vets. Maybe bring up Agustin Ramirez to be the DH/backup first baseman/3rd (or 4th) catcher. After a slow start Ramirez has started hitting in Triple A. Maybe he can out hit Grisham and allow Judge to take the field again? Jeter Downs is having a solid season in Scranton. Can he really be worse than Gleyber has been? Or LeMahieu? An infusion of youth has rallied Yankee teams in the past. It could work again. They just have to have the guts to make the changes.
The changes they need could come at the trading deadline but July 31st is along way away. They really can’t wait that long without risking losing their playoff spot. You don’t want it to be too little too late. They have to do something to get them hitting and they have to do it soon. Waiting and hoping that guys will come around is not the way to go. If their plan is to make trades, they have to do it as soon as possible and not wait until the last minute. You don’t actually have to wait until the deadline to make moves.
On this note, the Yankees rally have to try to sign Juan Soto to an extension before the trade deadline. Really as soon as possible. The All-Star break would be a great time to negotiate. They need to know if he is going to be in the fold past this year for two reasons. 1) If he is here long term, they are not desperate to win this season. They would not have to make desperate moves to try to improve their team to make sure they can win this year. Right now, they have to operate under the premise that this will be their only season with him which means they would be forced to do things they may not want to do as to not squander this one chance they have. 2) if he is on the team for the long haul, they now have their future parameters for operating. They now know if they have to cut budget for next season to fit him in. They also will know that they will have his bat in the line up to build around. And they will know that their outfield for the foreseeable future will be set with him, Judge, and the Martian. That would allow them to make other assets available for the right trade.
And I think they can get a deal done. I know Boris is his agent which usually means a guy wants top dollar and he wants teams bidding over him but Soto himself said he was ready to talk about an extension. And I think this offseason gave the Yankees a bit of an advantage. Boris failed this offseason. His clients did not get the huge long term deals they were looking for and they had to sign late and miss spring training and start the season late. It seems to me this would be the worst-case scenario for Soto. He is a guy who plays every day and hates to miss time. If he were to have to miss spring training and miss games, I think it would really piss him off. I think it is something he really wants to avoid. I think he would trade the chance at more money (and as we have seen, it’s only a chance) for the security of knowing where he will be next year. And being ready to go as soon as he can head down to spring training. He seems to love it in NY. He seems to like the team and the organization and the fans. And he has proven he can be an excellent hitter in the Bronx. Now is the time to lock him up so that Cashman can go about his business without a huge question mark hanging over everything thing he does.
One last thing before I wrap this novel up. I have to talk about the biggest issue the Yankees are having this season and that is injuries. It’s kind of ridiculous how bad the Yankees have been bitten by the injury bug. I know coaches, and GMs, and reporters love to talk about “next man up”, well, the next man…he’s injured too. It all started with Cole going down in spring training. That actually had a silver lining as Luis Gil stepped up. Then Clarke Schmidt got hurt but that was OK because they had Poteet. Oh wait. He got hurt after 3 starts and they were forced to bring Cole back to the Majors before he was ready. Then Stanton, who was mashing, fell to injury but that’s OK, it’s time for the Martian to take over. Nope. He got hurt almost the same day and is going to be out twice as long as Stanton. Then Rizzo broke his arm and is out but that, like the Cole injury, has a silver lining with Rice taking advantage of the opportunity. Glayber is now hurt, and has sucked all season, and I have talked a length about LeMahieu’s struggles. Well, first Jon Berti was injured so he couldn’t be the everyday third baseman forcing DJ to have to play. Then Caleb Durbin, who, after being acquired for one of the Yankees top prospects, was poised to take the next step to the Show when needed, is now on the 60-day IL with his mysterious injury. So the Yankees don’t have the guys they were hoping would be the replacements for the guys who are injured (or just sucking). That is just bad luck. (Someday I will tell you all about the curse I am suffering with but that’s for another day). Obviously, this isn’t Boone or Cashman’s fault. But again, neither of them is doing anything to help alleviate the problem. The Yankees are in a sad state right now. But the season is far from over. Hopefully they can have some good luck and pick up a couple of wins before heading into the much-needed All-Star break. Maybe coming out of it the team will look a little different. Hopefully they will not wait too long to make the necessary moves to right the ship and save the season.
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