New York Yankees in the Middle of a Power Outage
By Bill Pivetz
The New York Yankees are battling for another AL East title. They are just 1.5 games back of first place. However, with the way the team is hitting, it feels like 10 games. The Yankees’ bats have quieted, the pitching has stifled and the wins just aren’t coming. With 36 games left, the Yankees’ hitters need to turn on the power and score more runs. The question is, can they pull it off?
Let’s take a look at the team stats month by month.
After the first month of the season, the Yankees were sixth in the league in runs scored with 109. Granted, three of the teams ahead of the Yanks are in the AL East. Atop the list was the Toronto Blue Jays. Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, two of the older players on the team, lead the team in home runs with eight and five, respectively. The team finished with a 13-9 record, first in the division.
May was a bit of a drop off. The team scored 10 more runs, but so did the rest of the league. They were 10th in runs scored that month. Tex, A-Rod and Brian McCann led the team with six home runs each. The New York Yankees were still in first place, tied with the Tampa Bay Rays.
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June was a big month for the New York Yankees. Five players finished the month with at least 12 RBI, the previous three were joined by Brett Gardner and Chris Young. The team scored 137 runs, tied for fourth in the league. Again, leading the league were the Blue Jays, but they were fourth place in the AL East.
The weather wasn’t the only thing heating up in the summer months. The New York Yankees’s bat were, too. The offense scored 133 runs, the most in the league that month. The Blue Jays finished fourth. Six players had at least 11 RBI and eight had at least 10 runs scored. Again, Teixeira and Rodriguez led the team with nine home runs each. At the end of July, the Yankees had a six game lead in the AL East.
August came, and the New York Yankees began their decline. As of this post, the Yankees are 1.5 games back of the Blue Jays. They have just 91 runs scored, 25th in the league. The Blue Jays? 138 (third most). The batters that were hot all year have cooled off. McCann has six home runs and 15 RBI, Carlos Beltran has five and 14. No other batter has more than nine RBI this month. Tex has been dealing with a bone bruise on his leg. A-Rod has just two home runs. The team is 11-13 this month.
Father Time has finally caught up with one of the oldest teams in the league. According to Statista, the Yankees have the sixth-oldest team. This does take into account the rotation and bullpen, but having 40-year-old DH and 38-year-old right fielder doesn’t help matters.
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The New York Yankees have been a boom-or-bust offense over the last few years. They very rarely play “small ball” (sac flies, bunts, etc.). Of the nine batters that have played at least 20 games this month, five of them have a strikeout percentage of at least 20 percent. McCann isn’t too far behind with 19.2 percent. Of those same nine batters, five of them have a HR/FB percentage of at least 10 percent.
From a fantasy perspective, even with the downward spiral on the offense, nothing much changes. You will continue to own the top hitters on the team (Tex, A-Rod, Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury). Some of the others are on the fringe in deeper leagues.
However, with the recent numbers those players have put up, it will be hard to start them on an everyday basis. If you own any of them in a Roto league, they are not helping you in the counting stats. I’m not even going to mention batting average because only four everyday hitters are batting over .270.
There aren’t any significant injuries holding back the Yankees bats. Tex is dealing with a bruise, and Ellsbury has a sore hip, but that’s the extent of it. So, the mystery is why have they stopped scoring. The New York Yankees lineup just needs to wake up and break out of this slump.