This Offense is Abysmal
The Yankees offense looks f***ing dead. Every single one of them. Even DJ LeMahieu, the Yankees’ best hitter by leaps and bounds, is in the middle of an uncanny stretch of bad hitting. Of the Yankees every day starters (Higgy is 4-for-13 for a .308 avg and also Tyler Wade is 1-for-3 apparently lol), the three highest batting averages are: DJ (.277), Gio Urshela (.276), and Aaron Judge (.268). The next highest… Gary Sanchez with a .200 average, unless you want to count Brett Gardner as every day, in which case the next highest is a .214 average (which props up the team average of .205). And that isn’t even a knock on Gardy, who still puts up Gardy at-bats whenever he’s in the lineup (plus, of his six hits, two of them are doubles) or Gary, who I think has actually put up some really nice at-bats; and, of the team’s 17 grounders into a double play (tied for 3rdworst in the league), he has grounded into zero (also Gary has walked 7 times and has a .321 OBP, which is third among every day starters ahead of Urshela’s .311 OBP).
That’s not a knock on them because it’s the entire team, including the guys at the top. Judge and DJ have both grounded into a team leading 3 double plays. As the top 2 of the order, you need to be the ones who are starting and carrying the rallies, not ending them abruptly. Judge is currently sporting a 23.1% double play percentage (3 double plays in 13 opportunities) while DJ is sporting a 20% (3 DPs in 15 opportunities). The league average is 10.3%, the New York Yankees have only 6 players above that average now that Jay Bruce (40%, 2 DPs on 5 opportunities) has retired. Rougned Odor (33%, 2 DPs on 6 opportunities), Gio (22.2%, 2 DPs on 9 opportunities), Giancarlo Stanton (14.3%, 2 DPs on 14 opportunities), and Aaron Hicks (12.5%, 2 DPs on 16 opportunities), join them at above league average.
 |
| Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images |
4 ground balls to the left side now tonight for DJ and he’s having the same problem the entire team seems to be having right now... nobody can actually square up a ball, they can only roll over grounders or get too underneath pop ups rn https://t.co/nUaDhMlOR0
— Bronx Bomber Ball (@BronxBomberBall) April 22, 2021
Last night DJ continued a recent trend that we haven't seen from him since he’s donned the pinstripes. As you can see, he’s continually rolling over pitches and pulling grounders to the left side of the infield. Last night, on an 0-for-4 night, he grounded out to shortstop once, and grounded out to third three times. We are used to DJ being able to poke line drive singles to opposite field over the waving gloves of opposing second baseman. When your best hitter, and also your leadoff hitter doesn’t have it going, it’s tough for the whole team to get going. Since coming to New York, DJ has a .332 batting average, even including his 16 games and .277 avg so far this season, so this is something that we haven’t seen much of in his 3 years in the Bronx and hopefully will not have to see much more of in the future. Of everybody in this lineup, DJ is the one that I am least worried about at the moment, albeit one of the guys I'm more frustrated with watching.
Judge has struck out 15 times so far on the young season, which is tied for second on the team with a slew of players (Gleyber, Clint, and Hicks), who are only behind Stanton who has 21 and looks lost at the plate currently. The two Yankees big men have been very underwhelming thus far on the young season, and have been hearing it from fans. They have combined for 36 strikeouts in 113 at-bats (31.8%) and grounded into 5 double plays on 27 opportunities (18.5%), while combining for 24 hits, 7 of them homeruns (2 doubles) and 20 RBIs. You absolutely need better than that from what should be the heart of your lineup.
Gleyber continues to swing for the fences on every at-bat to no avail. He has 0 homeruns on the season even though he is second on the team in at-bats with 59, but he has no less than 100 homerun swings. As stated above, he is tied for second on the team in strikeouts with 15. It’s funny, because he is either completely fanning at the ball or watching a fastball go right down the pipe. We forget that when Gleyber was coming up through the system, he wasn’t supposed to have power. In more than 1400 at-bats over 5 minor league seasons, he hit just 24 homeruns. Then, in his first season in the MLB he hit 24 homeruns in 123 games on only 431 at-bats. In his second season, as a 22 year-old, lest we forget, he sent 38 over the fence in 546 at-bats. I hope he doesn’t keep pressing for dingers, because it’s obvious when watching him over his first two seasons, and then the last two, that when he just takes what the pitchers give him he can be a very good hitter and it’ll lead to homeruns anyway.
what is this effort pic.twitter.com/mdgUaPqSPc
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) April 22, 2021
(Also, I don’t want to harp on this because it’s been talked about a lot and I think it’s a bit of a boomer thing to be mad about, but come the fuck on man at least show a little bit of effort in running this out. I get slumping sucks and it’s more frustration than laziness but it’s also the last thing a fan wants to see when you’ve sucked from the get-go. That’s not just Gleyber but the team as a whole because there’s been a ton of this mopiness from everybody, and that stems from a weak manager who can’t light a fire under these guys’ asses for sh*t. Boone reminds me of the jokes about Jason Garrett as a head coach where the Cowboys would send the punt team on the field and he’d be smiling and clapping. The Yankees are off to historically bad starts across the board offensively and every press conference is the same bullsh*t about how “we’re not firing on all cylinders right now” and “we know we’ll get through this.”)
Those four players are the key to the Yankees season, and the Yankees’ future. If one or two of them can come out of this slump that they are going through, hopefully it can open things up throughout the lineup and unlock this team’s full potential, because I haven’t mentioned the pitching once in this blog, but they have been fucking phenomenal. It really is a shame that the offense has been this historically bad because if they were even playing at an average level right now the Yankees would probably have at least a winning record, if not, much better. In conclusion, the Yankees offense fucking sucks right now and I needed to rant about it. It starts at the top of the order but it really is a 1-9 issue and a manager who seems to be in no rush to fix anything.
P.S. I think it's time to have a discussion about Aaron Hicks not being a switch hitter, because he's been bad at the plate as a lefty going on three years now. I won't go into it here, but I think it's something to divulge a full blog into in the near future unless he shuts me up.
P.S.S. Does Marcus Thames have the easiest job in the world right now or the hardest? Like, seriously, all you have to do is get ONE of these fucking guys going and he can’t even do that. I won’t get into it because it'll be a whole new rant. Anyways, fire and DFA everybody except Matt Blake and the pitching staff. Go Yanks! Kill Me!
By: Nick Simonelli
Comments
Post a Comment