In the first week of August, the New York Yankees are sitting in fourth-place in the American League East, 9 1/2 games behind the first-place Boston Red Sox. With the possibility of a division title dwindling rapidly as the dog days of August begin to crawl by, the Yankees remain just 5 games behind Tampa Bay and Texas in the wild card race.
The Yankees mostly stood pat at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, only acquiring former Yankee All-Star Alfonso Soriano from the Cubs, along with cash to help pay the remaining 1+ seasons on his contract, for a minor league pitcher. They didn’t do anything to improve the shaky pitching staff, scuffling along with only Hiroki Kuroda and the recently-returned Ivan Nova carrying ERAs below 4.75.
Not that Soriano has been any sort of a savior for the offense; he’s hitting just .212/.235/.333 in his first 9 games in the Bronx. And the offense continues to struggle all the way around, with Robinson Cano and his fantastic .288/.371/.489 line really being the only worthwhile contributor on offense. The next best on-base percentage is the oft-injured Brett Gardner’s .338 mark.
So what’s next? How could the Yankees possibly hope to contend with the powerhouses that sit atop the East division? Is it even possible at this point?
Well, the division crown is almost certainly out of reach. There are only a handful of times in baseball history that a team has made up a deficit of nearly 10 games in the final 50 games of the season. The wild card? It’s tough to argue that the Yankees are even near-equals with any of the five teams that stand between them and the playoffs.
Tampa Bay and Texas are clearly superior clubs, and while Cleveland, Baltimore, and Kansas City should be seen as a on a level below the Rays and Rangers, all three of those squads are better, players 1 through 25, than the aging, banged-up Yankees.
The only reason to hold out some hope for Joe Girardi’s squad would be the hopeful return of relative health, the thus-far solid bullpen, and the expectation that some players still have some “rising to the mean” to take care of.
Take, for instance, C.C. Sabathia. On the one hand, this has easily been C.C’s worst season of his marvelous 14-plus year career. His current 4.78 ERA would rank as the worst in his career over a full season, and his 1.349 WHIP is his worst since his second season in the majors, way back in 2002.
Some positives: his walk rate of 2.2 per 9 innings would rank as one of the best of his career, and just last year Sabathia turned in the second-best walk per strikeout rate of his entire career at 4.48. So it isn’t like he’s been a middling, aging starter for very long.
I would also be remiss to not point out that Sabathia’s xFIP (Expected Fielding Independent Pitching) remains at a certainly-respectable 3.59, which would rank as his worst since 2010, but far from severely out of line from his career norms.
But…there also remains a decent chance that he’s taking a somewhat sharp turn into that no-turning-back land. According to FanGraphs, Sabathia’s average fastball velocity is all the way down to 91 mph, continuing a steady decline in velocity, from 93.9 in 2011 to 92.4 in 2012. Not exactly a gradual slide; more like a going down a steep set of stairs.
Is there some hope for improvement for Sabathia? Well, I wouldn’t count on the velocity to return for a 33-year old pitcher of C.C’s build to return in the heat of August. He has been in the strike zone more frequently in 2013 than in 2012, but it isn’t like he’s pounding the corners any more than he has in the past.
Unless he learns to paint the corners a little more as the velocity continues to fade rapidly, this might be the new Sabathia. If he can somehow improve his performance over the last nine weeks of the season, however, the Yankees would have a decent top three in the rotation with Kuroda, Nova, and Sabathia. But let’s not hold our breaths.
Of course, C.C. Sabathia isn’t the only player on the Yankees. But there doesn’t appear to be a lot of hope for the hapless offensive attack. Cano continues to drag the weight of an ancient, punch-less lineup. The Yankees rank 24th in the majors in home runs with just 93 through play on August 5, and they don’t exactly play in spacious confines. (The pitching staff has given up the 9th most home runs in the majors at 116.)
All offensive regulars on the Yankees are over 30 years of age except for 29 year-old Brett Gardner and the 26-year old, light-hitting infielders David Abrams and Eduardo Nunez. Derek Jeter is back on the shelf, Francisco Cervellis has been suspended for 50 games, and Alex Rodriguez will be there soon for this year and next. Not a lot of youth that Girardi and his staff are simply waiting for to figure it out and mature. There just isn’t much…talent.
Obviously, the Yankees are already facing very long odds to make the playoffs at this stage in the game (ESPN gives the Yanks just a 3.9% chance of making it), but the five-game deficit in the wild card race certainly isn’t entirely out of the question.
Ultimately, it was a great (non)move by the New York front office to avoid trading off any potential trade assets to try and salvage this mostly lost and distraction-filled season. Not that the Yankees have a boatload of attractive trade pieces, of course.
But, at least there’s something for Yankees fans to hang their hats on in 2013.
