The New York Yankees ended April with a 18-13 record and stand in first place in the AL East, 3 games ahead of the Red Sox and Blue Jays.  While the Yanks are off to a good start, it hasn’t been all Unicorns and Rainbows for the Bronx Bombers.  There has been some bad to go along with some great stuff.   Let’s look at where the team stands after 31 games. 

OK we are going to start with the good and there is possibly no one better in the history of baseball than Aaron Judge.  That seems so weird to say but what he is doing right now is right up there with Ruth and Gehrig and Williams and Aaron.  And he is putting up these ridiculous video game numbers in an era where offense and hitting are down.  Judge is currently hitting .427 with 10 home runs and 32 RBIs.  All three of those numbers leads the Majors.  He also leads the Majors in OBP (.521), Slugging (.761), OPS, obviously, (1.282) and WAR (2.9).  Last season at the end of April he was hitting .206 with 6 home runs and 18 RBIs.  He went on to hit .322 with 58 and 144.  What is he going to do this season?  Against lefties he has had only 22 ABs.  In those ABs he is hitting .500 with a .607 OBP and has 5 homers and 12 RBIs.  That is a 127-home run and 305 RBIs pace.  It’s a tiny sample size but it’s still ridiculous.   The Yankees have played 31 games.  He has reached base in all but one of them.  There are not enough superlatives to describe the season he is having and we are just getting to the point where he usually starts to heat up.  

One more thought on Judge.  If Aaron Boone would just listen to me and bat him 3^rd every game, his numbers would be even better.  In 70 Abs batting second, he has 2 homers and 12 RBIs.  In only 47 ABs batting 3^rd he has 8 homers and 20 RBIs.  I don’t understand why Boone can’t see this.  Especially when he has guys who can easily bat in front of him.  Goldschmidt is still hitting .356 and should hit leadoff.  And Ben Rice is having a great season and should bat second.  If he wants, batting the red-hot Trent Grisham second would work as well.  Get guys on base ahead of Judge and force teams to pitch to him.  It’s really not that hard. 

One more thought on the batting order.  I think it may be time to try hitting a righty behind Judge.  I understand the righty lefty idea and I am usually all for it.  However, once teams get into their bullpens, the strategy seems to be to bring in a lefty to pitch to the guy in front of Judge, pitch around Judge, and then pitch to the lefty behind Judge.  Now, there is no one in baseball you can put behind Judge to make teams chose to pitch to Judge instead.  So I think the best strategy might be to put the guys around him in the best possible position to succeed.  In other words, If teams bring in a lefty to pitch to the guy in front of Judge, then that lefty is going to have to pitch to the righty behind him.  It is something they should definitely think about and try a few times to see how it goes.  They have some guys who are killing left-handed pitching who could do some damage if Judge is on base ahead of them. 

While Judge’s historic start and Goldschmidt, Rice, and Grisham’s hot starts have the Yankees offense at the top of the league (1^st in Homers, 1^st in average, OBP, SLG and OPS, and second in Runs), not everyone is off to a great start.  Volpe, who is second on the team in RBIs, is still a very streaky hitter.  Bellinger is finally starting to come around (.316 in last 6 games) after a terrible start.  Jazz was dismal at the plate before the injury (.181 with 39 Ks).  Hopefully his injury isn’t bad and a few days off will get him going.  Wells got off to a slow start average wise but is starting to come around.  And the Martian can’t hit lefties at all.  More on him later.  Oswaldo Cabrera has been a bright spot in the line up hitting .291 and somehow mashing lefties to the tune of .429.  If the Bombers could ever all get going at once, I can’t imagine how good this offense could be. 

While the hitting has been very good, I can’t say the same about the pitching.  The Yankees are 11^th in the league in ERA.  24^th in quality starts, and 11^th in runs against.  Their biggest problem continues to be the walks.  They are 26^th in the league in walks.  When you consider they are 9^th in home runs allowed and 1^st in fewest hits allowed, and 5^th in strike outs, it’s obviously the walks that are killing them.  If they can just do a better job of not issuing free passes, the rest of their stats will improve as well and they will win more games.

The star of the pitching staff is still Maxwell Jacob Freidman.  No wait, wrong guy.  The Ace of the staff is Max Fried.  Max is 5-0 in 6 starts with a 1.19 ERA.  He has 4 quality starts, and 33 Ks in 37.2 innings.  He hasn’t given up more than 2 runs in a start and has three starts where he did not give up a run.  He’s been everything the Yankees could want from their big offseason acquisition.  Fun stat for Fried is that the one start he did not get the win was the game the Yankees hit 9 home runs in.  It was his first start and his pitch count kept him from completing 5 innings.   

Now if only I could say this kind of stuff for the rest of the rotation.  Rodon has turned things around after a rough start.  He has had back-to-back outings of not giving up an earned run before surrendering a 2-run home run in his last start.  Of course, it would have been a solo shot had he not walked the guy before giving up the long ball.  He has lowered his ERA to a respectable 3.43 and has 52 Ks in 42 innings.  He does however have 19 walks, which is the second most in the Majors, and has given up 6 home runs already.   

Clarke Schmidt has only made 3 starts so far and has had 2 good ones and one bad one.  Hopefully the bad one was an outlier and he continues to pitch as he has in the past.  It would be big for the Yankees with the way the rest of the rotation has been pitching. 

Strowman was terrible before he was injured.   Hopefully it’s a long, slow recovery.  Carlos Carrasco has had an up and down season so far.  Literally.  Evey other start he gets lit up.  His last 5 starts he has given up 4 runs, 1 run, 4 runs, 0 runs, 4 runs.  He had given up 3 runs in each of his prior starts.  I have no reason for the inconsistency.  Or I guess that would be consistency.  His biggest issue is giving out souvenirs.  He has given up 7 home runs, 3 of which came in one game in Detroit.  That’s borderline impressive.  He needs to find a way to keep the ball in the ball park if he is going to have success. 

Will Warren has had the same problem that Carrasco has had.  Every other start is terrible.  His runs in each of his starts go 2-4-2-1-2-4.  The one run game was when he was pulled with the bases loaded in the second inning.  In each his 3 good starts he has thrown 5 innings.  In the 3 bad starts he has a combined 9 innings.  I don’t know why both he and Carrasco keep alternating good starts and bad ones but the Yankees need to figure it out.  His walks are not bad and he has 26 Ks in 24 innings.  I don’t know what the issue is, but if they can fine tune his pitching, he would be a really solid member of the rotation. 

Aside from the walks, the Bullpen has been really good.  A few glitches here and there but pretty much as good as you would expect from a Yankees Bullpen.  Except, of course, for one guy, Devin Williams. I am on the other side of the Devin Williams debate.  I think pulling him from the closer role was wrong and I don’t think he has been as bad as everyone thinks.  My biggest thing here is that I have been a long-time believer, and this goes all the way back to Mo Rivera, that you do not bring in your closer in non-save situations.  You just do not do it.  It rarely works out.  This is why I don’t believe Williams has been that bad.  He has only been bad in one save situation.  Before that last one, he was 4-0 in save situations and only gave up one run in his first outing.  It was the non-save situations where he was terrible.  Let’s look at it…   

First outing was a save situation he gave up 1 run on 2 hits and a walk and got the save

Second outing was a non-save where he walked a guy but did not give up any runs

Third outing was in extra innings still tied where he gave up the run which shouldn’t even count (don’t get me started on the extra innings rules)

Forth outing was a non-save where he gave up 3 runs but the Yankees were up 4 so they won. 

Fifth outing was non-save where he did not give up a run but walked a guy and gave up a hit

Sixth outing was a save where he waked a guy and gave up a hit but did not give up a run

Seventh outing was a save where he had a clean inning

Eighth outing was a save where he had another clean inning

Ninth outing was a non-save where they had another guy warming with Williams as it was a 3-run lead with the Yankees batting.  The Yankees scored a 4^th run and they still put Williams in as apparently the other guy was warming just to keep him company.  He gave up 4 runs, 3 of them earned, and the Yankees lost in extras and I spent 30 minutes cursing Aaron Boone. 

Then we get to the tenth outing.  I could very easily go off on a rant here about how dumb Yankee fans are and how they all deserved to sit through that loss after calling for Weaver before Williams even through a pitch.  But I won’t.  I will say that clearly had an effect on Williams as he blew his first save giving up 3 runs without recording an out. 

This is when he got pulled from the closer role.  Yet, as I pointed out, he was doing fine as the closer up until this one outing.  It was all the non-save situations where he sucked.  So why pull him.  Just use him right and hope the Yankees fans at the Stadium grow some brains. 

Since being pulled, Williams has made two appearances in non-save situations.  He has not surrendered a run and has only given up one base runner (a walk, of course).  So now what?  He has pitched fine, do they put him back in the closer spot?  How long does he have to pitch well to get his job back?  What is the plan here?  Hopefully they have one, but I doubt it.  They really just need to put him back there again. 

Another reason I hate pulling Williams is because Weaver has to take over as the closer.  Weaver is a very good closer.  He would be great in that role.  However, he is much more valuable as a fire man and/or pitching more than one inning than he is as the closer.  I mean I am sure Fried would make a great closer but he has more value as a starter.  It’s the same concept.  Being able to use Weaver in the 7^th or 8^th in big spots coming in to shut down a rally is a much better use for him than saving him for the 9^th.  It’s the whole reason they went and got Williams in the first place.  So they can use Weaver to the best of his abilities. 

The Yankees are starting a 6-game home stand tonight.  I don’t know how the home crowd will react to him coming in in the 9^th, so maybe they should hold off, but if he pitches well in these 6 games, he has to go back to the closer role when they head out west.  He will be fine and it will make the team a lot better. 

We shall close with our Rookie of the Year chase.  The Martian is still behind as his .228 average is way below the others.  He is, however, right up there in RBIs, Doubles, and stolen bases.  His problem is that he is a switch hitter who can’t hit right-handed.  He is hitting .316 against righties with both of his home runs.  Against lefties he is only hitting .086.  I always wonder why guys who hit terribly from one side of the plate keep switch hitting.  Like, could he be worse batting lefty on lefty?  Wouldn’t it be better to just concentrate on one swing instead of two? Maybe give it a shot.  With that said, here is where we stand with the ROY race…

Dominguez is hitting .228 with 2 homer, 12 RBIs, 7 doubles, 14 runs, 3 stolen base, 11 walks, 34 Ks, and a .317 OBP. In 92 At Bats   

Kristian Campbell is hitting .301 with 4 homers, 12 RBIs, 8 doubles, 18 runs, 2 stolen bases, 1 caught stealing, 19 walks, 32 Ks, and a .407 OBP. In 103 At Bats

Kameron Misner is hitting .316 with 3 homer, 11 RBIs, 7 doubles, 14 runs, 1 steal, 6 walks, 20 Ks, and a .364 OBP. In 79 At Bats

Jacob Wilson is at .331 with 3 homers, 16 RBIs, 6 doubles, 16 runs, 1 steal, 3 walks, 6 Ks, and a .347 OBP. In 118 At Bats. 

I would say that Wilson is still in the lead but they are all really close.  It’s kind of amazing that Wilson has only 3 walks and 6 Ks in 118 ABs.  He really puts the ball in play. 

That should do it for this Update from Yankee Land.  I am hoping to have my first Down on the Farm out on Monday so hopefully we will get our first look at the Yankees top prospects than.